Page 9 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
“Bit low on mountains here,” she points out. Denmark is predominantly flat, which has allowed for cycling to become the main mode of transport.
“True, but I come from the Highlandsand Islands.Personally,it’s the water that draws me more than the heights.”
Anna nods and drinks. “Where’s your office?”
“Here most of the time, unless I’m meeting companies to advise them on initiatives, projects and collaborations, which can be all over the city, or into Sweden on occasion. The bridge makes that easy.”
“No office?”
“We have an office in Christianshavn, in an oldpakhus. I show my face there a few times a week, or if I’m passing. Everything’s close here though, isn’t it?”
“It is indeed,” says Anna, although she wants to say, “sometimes too close.”
Jamie serves what will be the bestbiksemadher exhausted body thinks it has ever tasted, although her head will tell her she’s disloyal to hermormor. He turns on a few more candles around the room before he sits and tops up their glasses. Anna feels like she’s a guest a colleague has cajoled him into entertaining. It’s polite and gradually more and more open– perhaps due to the wine– but it isn’t quite friendly or truly comfortable.
Anna takes the moment to look about the room some more. He has illuminated paper stars hanging in the glass doorways to the garden. She hadn’t noticed them earlier. They’re both festive and cosy.
“Aren’t you supposed to be against frivolous use of energy?”
He takes a swig of his wine and considers the question. “I spend my days trying to come up with helpful sustainability ideas, things we can all manage and can help in the long run, but I don’t begrudge people wanting theirhygge. I don’t strive to make people miserable.” Good to know, Anna thinks, as he’s had his less-than-charming moments with her. “Because then they won’t bother. And I’m not looking to dismantle an entire culture. In a land like this, where winter is long, the need for lights and cosiness is vital. So, I don’t consider it frivolous.
“If I spun Christmas lights around the entire house and needed a generator to power it all, you should probably have a frank chat with me, but this? No. The candles are rechargeable, as that’s better than the wax, and the bulbs in the stars there use the lowest wattage bulbs. And I feed my guests leftovers, so I’m doing my bit.” He’d have to wrestle real candles out of Denmark’s cold dead hands, so thank goodness he isn’t on a crusade for that. Anna, a little stunned from him speaking so many words, raises her glass to him, then sips. They still aren’t at a clinking stage.
“And you?” he asks. “Travel specialist, you said.”
“I’m freelance, so I have various income streams. I used to work full-time here for a travel e-publisher and devised a series calledRomancity, looking at cities through a romantic lens. That’s franchised now. I still write for their website, though. I’m based in London but spend time in the cities I’m writing about. I go by train when I can,” she adds at the end, not wanting to come across as solely responsible for climate change. “To be honest, arriving by train can be a very romantic way to enter a city, but sometimes, I have to confess, the timings require a flight.”
Thankfully he doesn’t tell her off. She is, after all, encouraging people to do things that make his job harder. She sees the conflict. “Meanwhile,” she carries on to divert him, “I write articles for the glossy magazines on specific places, depending on where they want a feature, but my favourite job is coming up with niche tours around European cities: food tours of Lisbon, or Vespa tours of Rome, that kind of thing. I put them together with the local vendors and sell them to travel and cruise companies.”
Jamie nods, but doesn’t ask more. Instead, he clears the plates.
“Out of interest,” he asks from the other side of the kitchen island, “your things upstairs in the room, and I’m guessing in the locked room in the basement…”
Anna holds her hands up. “It’s my bike and outdoor things like ice-skates, definitely no bodies, or a sex dungeon.” Her face heats when she realises what she’s said. She does not need to be bringing sex to the table. Her inhibitions and manners have disappeared with the wine and the tiredness that’s creeping up on her.
“I’ll be sure to inform my friends,” he says. “I was actually going to ask what you had planned to do with them. Are you coming back to Copenhagen?”
“Oh, no,” she says immediately. “You don’t need to worry about that, Jamie. I’m not about to end your tenancy and turf you out.”
“Not what I meant,” he says, “but good to know.”
“I left in a hurry and hadn’t quite thought it through, but I have absolutely no plans to move back here. Ever. Copenhagen and I are finished with each other. Full stop. Done.”
She watches his eyebrows rise at her vehemence. Bloody wine. It is definitely getting to her. “I suppose I’ll have to come back to sort it at some point, maybe between tenancies if you choose to leave one day, but not for the foreseeable.” There’s a prospect she’s going to safely leave for Future Anna. The planes will be back up and flying as soon as the snow stops, and her bum will be firmly in a seat out of here.
Jamie watches her quietly, his mouth pressed in a pensive line. She wants to know what he’s thinking, but also, she doesn’t want to know, because she worries she’ll be found lacking. And as worryingly, she’s not sure why that would matter to her.
In the quiet and to her horror, a huge yawn ambushes her. The mortification on her face makes the side of his mouth twitch.
“You should go to bed.” She’s not sure if she is being dismissed, but the idea is welcome.
Thanking him for dinner with the customary, “Takformad,” Anna offers to wash up. It seems only fair, but she’s relieved when he refuses. “The bed’s made and there’s towels in the bathroom,” he adds. “Go and sleep.”
Anna manages a simple “God nat,” to which he returns a soft “Sov godt.”
His wishes for her to sleep well clearly work, as she’s out the instant her head hits the pillow.
ChapterSix
