Page 72 of A Copenhagen Snowmance
Anna stays mute. Her throat’s in a knot of panic and anger and general squirminess. Her eyes check again for a way out of this unwanted conversation. She doesn’t want to look Maiken in the eyes, or at her at all, for that matter, but from what she saw through her horror at Maiken’s approach, she looks pretty much exactly as she used to. Where Anna’s life was shattered, Maiken doesn’t seem to have aged at all, or changed at all, and she’s certainly not wearing a scarlet letter on her chest, which Anna thinks would be apt. Moreover, she doesn’t look ashamed, or contrite or embarrassed, all of which are due, but then again Maiken is used to facing down all sorts of dodgy people in her line of work, so she’s cultivated an iron-clad poker face.
“Carl said you had a new man. I’m guessing that’s Jamie.”
Something makes Anna nod. Pride? That she could be with Jamie, or that she doesn’t want Maiken or Carl to think she’s alone still after what happened? That their actions have put her off pursuing any kind of relationship since? Or that she’s just sticking to her deal of being his girlfriend while she’s here? Who knows? She’s simply letting her physical head take the lead while her mental head is catching up, still stuck on Jamie, setting this up, orchestrating the thing he knew she least wanted.
“I’m also guessing you didn’t plan this.”
“You think?” Anna snaps. Ah. Voice has now entered the chat, and it’s riding in on Anger.
Maiken’s smile is small, but it’s there and it piques Anna further.
“If I had my way, we’d never see each other again,” she says through gritted teeth.
Their waitress is back, just in time to hear Anna say this, and the air becomes even more awkward.
“Er,” the young woman begins, “an afternoon tea for two has been pre-paid for you, I just need to know what tea you’d like.” She senses she’s on shaky ground and the question comes out more like “Are you staying?”
Anna wonders whether she can ask for hers “to go”.
Maiken flicks a quick look at the card and asks for a White Temple tea. Then she looks at Anna and raises her eyebrows just a fraction, which feels like a challenge. Anna hasn’t had a cup of Green Cherry Blossom tea for ages and had already planned to buy a large bagful on the way home. That’s what she asks for now, not even looking at the card, like she drinks here daily and knows the menu by heart. She’s grasping at the small wins. The waitress practically sprints away, leaving Anna to suspect the vibe is “spiky”.
“I saw you in the paper,” Maiken says, “and across most of the Danish internet. I would have recognised the hat anywhere, though maybe not the pose. That’s not the quiet Anna I remember.”
Yes, well, it hadn’t sat too comfortably with her at the time, nor in the days after, but right at this minute Anna feels a small thrill that she’s the woman in theoh-so romanticviral photos.
She tries a nonchalant shrug, as if she’s spent the last eighteen months being snogged across London in front of iconic sites.
“Why is it, do you think, that your Jamie has set this up?”
Maiken is being the investigative journalist with her. She’ll keep asking questions until she has the information she wants. She’s seen as quite the Rottweiler in the Danish news world, a guise she’s very proud of.
“No idea, but he’ll be getting a kick in the arse for it when I get home.”
Maiken quirks an eyebrow at her.
“It obviously wasn’t my intention to see you, Maiken. If I’d wanted to see you, I would have called.” Sounding tough here is what she wants, but inside she’s jelly. This whole scenario is making her toes curl.
The tea arrives and they sit in silence, the animosity bristling between them. The waitress has called in reinforcements and their three tiers of scones, finger sandwiches and cakes arrive just behind. Anna wonders whether this was part of Jamie’s dastardly plan, that they’d be forced to share the food from the one cake stand. She’ll be giving him an extra kick for his poxy symbolism. She is so mad at him, she can almost feel steam wisping from her ears ahead of the eruption there will be when she sees him. But she has more immediate fish to fry, and so she backburners that for now.
She looks long and hard at the woman who knew everything about her, who she would have trusted with anything and everything, and there is only one thing she wants to know. It’s on the tip of her tongue, even though she’s insisted to Jamie she doesn’t care.
“Go on,” says Maiken, sensing it, reading her like she would an interviewee. “Ask me.” It’s a challenge and it’s also the last straw Anna needs to tip her over the precipice.
“What did I do that made you hate me that much?”
Maiken looks out of the window, and Anna sees her shoulders slide lower. When she turns back it’s with a sigh.
“I didn’t hate you. I didn’t ever hate you.”
“So why would you do that to me?” It bursts out of Anna louder than she’s intended and the couple of women two tables over turn to stare at her. She resolutely ignores them.
“You were my best friend,” she hisses, in case Maiken had missed it.
Maiken gives a deflating sigh, which Anna decides to read as shame. “I dare say I wasn’t really thinking about you at all at the time. When it happened the first time, I felt incredibly guilty. I hadn’t expected it, or intended anything, but it just happened.”
Anna is itching to ask for the details, every single little thing so she can pick over them later, but her heart pitches up now and nixes that plan. There is obviously only so much it can take. Topline is enough.
“But after that I began to see the cracks in your relationship, the way you treated him and at the same time the way I felt about him changed to something more.”
