Page 15 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Her eyes flick to the window. It’s true, the light has faded, the candles giving off more of a glow. Then Anna finds the next two pieces of the mast. Only two bits to go. Confidence surges through her and so she finds herself actually agreeing.
The words are just out of her mouth when Jamie places a piece onto the mast– her mast! Rude!– and then a piece of half a porthole, swiftly followed by a second to complete it. Within fifteen seconds she’s gone from winning to losing. He only needs one and she needs two.
There follows a period of deeply invested concentration, their silence loud with the determination to find the next piece.
“Yes!” she shouts and fixes a piece of a green-painted house. They’re level. Theæbleskiverhave been forgotten. And then she sees it: a white, low triangle of a quayside restaurant sunbrella, which she snatches up with a whoop, wishing now that she’d kept the bragging rights, too, as she’s going to win. She presses it next to a similar triangle. Only it doesn’t click into place. She tries again, but still, it won’t.
“Oh dear, Anna,” Jamie says, “what a shame,” as he slowly and decisively moves her hand aside to deftly click a very similar and correct piece into the space. He lets out avery satisfied and over-exaggerated groan of pleasure, while Anna’s gaze is stuck on her hand where he’d touched it, and the feel of his skin that remains. Apparently oblivious to this, Jamie neatly dips anotheræbleskiveand pops it smugly in his mouth. “Bad luck.”
She wants to tell him speaking with his mouth full is very ill-mannered, but she’s still swayed by how close she was, and how she now might have to go outside. Dejected, she self-soothes by horsing another four dumplings on the trot. It’s very hard to be a gracious loser right now, but she eventually manages a mumbled, “Well done.”
She holds the bowl out to him to snag the last one, which he does. She regrets her generosity. She’d hoped he’d decline. But then he pulls theæbleskiveapart and gives her half.
“So,” he says, sitting back again, “tell me where you’ve travelled to.” Jamie is opening the conversation, Anna notes. This is new. And this she is happy to talk about.
“It’s a bit of a list. By the time I was sixteen I’d lived in ten different countries, often more than once though never in the same place, mainly within Europe except for a stint in Thailand. You can imagine how consistent my schooling was. Then I came back here to live with my grandparents with a view to getting the education under control. After uni I took an extra journalism qualification in Aarhus and became a travel writer. The subsequent list is a lot longer.” She’s relaxed into the sofa now, belly full of pancake and jam. Bliss. “I had said I curate tours too, hadn’t I?” she asks, not sure.
“Twice already. And I checked.”
“What?”
“I googled you,” he says, unabashed.
Her eyebrows shoot up.
“Oh, come on,” he says, “I might take in bedraggled strangers, but I check their details on my phone before I invite them to stay. I watch crime shows. I’m not a complete idiot.”
“There I was, worrying you were a serial killer, and youmockedme.” What really narks Anna is she hadn’t thought to google himat allbefore accepting. What a muppet. One handsome face and all her survival instincts go out of the window.
“And being a travel specialist told you I was a safe and good human?” she asks, wanting his efforts to be as flimsy as hers.
“No, I was just starting a trail for the police to follow if I go missing.” The possibility in the “go” is not lost on Anna. Good. Seems she still has an ounce of agency left in this.
“So where have you travelled to, Jamie?”
This starts a game of Travel Snap, as he reels off places he’s visited and she matches them, both chipping in what they’d loved and hated.
“And you said you travel on business?” she asks.
“A little. Conferences, etc. It’s mainly Copenhagen-based, though.”
What Anna particularly loves when travelling, is the flux of people; the coming and the going. Stations where people get on trains as you alight, or airports with planes landing as you take off. And she loves being part of that moving energy. And, presumably Jamie has too, in his extensive travelling, yet here he is, having… well, stopped.
“But one day, you’ll be back out there, right?” She wants him to be having the joy of travel, the thing that had them both buzzing moments ago as they swapped stories and shared memories of the places they’d been.
His face seems to cloud, and then he stands and picks up their plates and mugs.
“I’ve got no plans to leave. It’s my home now. Or at least I’m working on it.”
Again, there’s something in the way he says it that reinforces her thought that there’s more to this. Something central to his being here, when, given his history, she can see he’s a traveller at heart. Like her.
Whatever it is, it’s not something he intends to share with her.
“Right,” he says, descending the stairs. “Dinner’s out. Winner’s prerogative. The shopping can wait ’til tomorrow. Get your coat on, Anna.”
Her jaw drops. Serial killer or not. The man is cruel.
ChapterEight
