There are Christmas trees alight with white bulbs lining our route into the terminal and they’re glowing in the strange darkness of the morning. I check my phone thinking that time has stood still since our take-off in England and it’s still somehow six o’clock – judging by the dark emerald sky shot through with cranberry pink, and the strange muted glow of a waning crescent moon half obscured beneath the horizon. I’m astonished to find it’s nearly eleven, local time. Back home it’ll be almost nine and light by now.
Even though it’s oddly gloomy and there are curiously fine, glittering snowflakes falling rapidly from the sky, I’m struck by the feeling of the heavens stretching out above and around us, and my lungs seem to be expanding and my back straightening as I raise my head and look up. I’ve never been more aware of where I am on the planet. This is the kind of North that makes Manchester grimness seem positively equatorial and balmy. We’re up in the stars here.
Entering through the glass doors and into passport control, everything is quiet, clean and calm, nothing like the hideous scrum this morning at Manchester airport, and the horror of the security hall. Was any place designed to be less Christmassy and exciting for travellers than that? This, on the other hand, feels serene and if not effusively welcoming, at least comfortingly inviting. I see Nari trying to coax a smile out of the serious official with ice-blue eyes who’s examining her passport inside his glass box. He’s immune to her flip vivacity it seems and I catch a flicker of surprise on her face as she gives him up as a lost cause.
My heart sinks a bit as I approach the only baggage reclaim carousel in the airport. There, straddling the suitcases, riding round and round and flapping their green and white candy-striped arms are three rosy cheeked elves. The bells on their drooping red hats tinkle as they greet us. One of them pats me on the head as they glide by on the conveyor belt.
It’s mid-morning, I haven’t had my first cup of coffee yet, and there’s just NO NEED for this kind of forced jollity, and,hell no, is that a reindeer over there? Yep, another elfy toerag has arrived and is leading a very pissed off looking reindeer in a halter. He looks like he’s been dragged reluctantly from a cosy shed somewhere and he’s making angry huffing snorts through fuzzy nostrils. He has an antler missing but they’ve decorated the remaining one with silver tinsel. He and I exchange sympathetic, un-Christmassy glances.I know how you feel, babe.
Last Christmas, I’d have been over there posing for a selfie with Rudolf, grinning like a child on Christmas day. I used to love this kind of thing, but I’ve lost it this year. I hope this trip helps bring the Christmas cheer back. Once upon a time I had it in spades. Mum drilled it into me as a kid with her amazing year-round Christmas planning. She really went all out for Christmas. Looking back, I wonder how much of that was to do with me being an only child and Mum trying to make each year extra special for me. She’d buy posh crackers and discounted decorations in the January sales and squirrel them away for December. I’d catch her in her bedroom curling ribbons and wrapping gifts all autumn long. She always made sure I had a new party frock for Christmas Day, and we’d do the rounds of Santa’s grottos in the Chester department stores. Even though I knew none of the Santas we saw were the real thing, I was still convinced they somehow had a direct line to The Big Guy himself, so I made sure to be as good as gold while we queued up.
I heave a sigh as I scan the room, looking for Nari. She’s already wrestled her suitcase from between the knees of a particularly excitable elf and is marching briskly for the exit, presumably to see if our taxi’s waiting. My case is nowhere to be seen so I step back from the carousel and wait it out.
A gaggle of screaming children have gathered around a lady elf dressed in an inappropriately skimpy elf-frock. She’s handing out sweets from a basket. I notice a few of the mums and dads helping themselves to the sweets too. I could do with a chocolate. I guess I don’t qualify for one, as I don’t have kids with me.
Through the glass, I can see a coach out on the road, its engine idling, ready to whisk the families away to their various resorts and the Christmas of a Lifetime spent searching for Santa, singing carols in hotel restaurants, leaving out bowls of porridge for magical elves on Christmas Eve, and excitedly tipping out the contents of overstuffed stockings when the Big Day finally arrives.
It comes out of nowhere and hits me in the gut as I watch the misty-eyed parents snapping photo after photo of their children’s awestruck, elated faces. I’m all alone here at the top of the world. No husband, no babies. My own mum and dad are miles away and I suddenly miss them so, so much. Meanwhile Cole’s at his mother’s house with his gorgeous, pregnant trolley-dolly girlfriend and Patricia’s probably snapped up the entire range of The White Company newborn clothes already, and oh, how they’ll laugh and chatter about the new life waiting to come into the world and what a perfect daddy Cole’s going to be…
One of the elves has put her arm around my shoulder and is giving me a gentle hug. She must think I’m overwhelmed by the magic of Christmas and their enchanting Lapland welcome, but honestly, I’m just tired and grouchy and feeling sorry for myself. The nice lady elf in the too-short dress stuffs a handful of her candies in my coat pocket with a wink that tells me I’m not the first recently dumped woman to blub in her arrivals lounge, and I give her a grateful nod before grabbing my errant suitcase and making a run for the taxi.
‘Please don’t tell me it’ll all be like this,’ I say to Nari who’s waiting for me outside.
‘Like what?’
‘Like Christmas on uppers and cooking sherry. It’s too much.’
Nari just laughs. As the driver helps her load our cases into the boot, I look around.
So this is Lapland. It’s absolutely glacial and I’m aware that my thick jersey trousers, perfect for chilly days in Cheshire, are never going to cut it here and my legs are prickling with cold.
We seem to be on a raised plain overlooking lowlands on all sides. Lights from a small city bleed into the late dawn light far in the distance to my left.
‘Is that where we’re going?’ I ask the driver, who is, oddly, wearing little more than jeans, jumper, and a thin beany hat despite the arctic chill. He chuckles knowingly to himself.
‘No, you’re going that way.’ He points a gloved finger along the road to our right where the dark lowland stretches on and on into nothingness and the road seems to disappear in a swathe of white.
As we drive I share the nice elf’s sweets around and I think about the waterworks back at the airport. Those happy families really got to me, but it’s not like I want to have Cole’s baby, not now, obviously. And I don’t even resent him having a family of his own. If anything, I hope he falls head over heels for that little baby and he gives it all the love and care he couldn’t find in his heart for me and our hypothetical future rugrats.
It’s just that babies were all part of our plan, you see? Get a house, get a job, get married, and hopefully be lucky enough to get a take-home baby one day, giving Mum the excuse she’s been itching for to knit a thousand pairs of pastel booties and tiny matinee jackets. But when your plans are all torn up and chucked back in your face it takes a while to readjust.
For the immediate future I have no plans other than tomake no more plans. I’m simply determined to enjoy this holiday and hoping it does the trick of putting some more distance between me, Cole and the past six months… and if Icanbring back a little Christmas sparkle, all the better.
I reach into my pocket and pull out the two silver sixpences Mum gave me as I dropped my parents off at the airport ahead of their American adventure.
‘Here you are, Nari,’ I say, as I hand one over. ‘A talisman for a happy Christmas.’
Chapter Nine
‘Now this is more like it!’ I squeal as I barge around my cabin, flipping lights on and opening cupboards.
Nari’s behind me in the doorway. She’s accustomed to luxury travel, but I get overwhelmed at the opulence of a Premier Inn breakfast buffet, so this spacious, wooden cabin with its fur rugs and roaring fire feelsreallyspecial. There’s a kitchen with a proper stove and a huge fridge stocked with food for our arrival.
‘Thank you, Stephen the Sex God!’ I exclaim as I peer at the bottles through the glass door of the wine cooler.
Nari’s joined me now and is nodding with a knowing smile. ‘He did promise us a few extras, remember?’ Her eyes glaze over and a devilish grin forms. I know she’s thinking of all the ways she can thank him for his generosity come their New Year rendezvous in London.
Leaving the lounge with its towering chimney and bushy – but bare, I notice –Christmas tree behind me, I push open a wide door at the far end of the lounge, revealing a smaller room like a glass house with a white bed and a towering pyramid roof and a view of the sky above. My shoulders collapse as the mood of relaxation hits me.
