P.S. The reindeer is for your friend. It’s from Niilo
If therewereany armed yeti men hanging around the cabins with murderous intent, Nari’s delighted screams would have seen them off into the arctic wilderness. Even so, once I hug her goodnight and lock myself into my cabin alone, I don’t have it in me to brave a night by myself in the glass-box bedroom. I half consider knocking at Nari’s cabin door and asking if I can sleep with her but I know she’ll already be drawing a steaming hot bath and getting her face masks out of her case. I suppose this is technically a working holiday for her and she needs her quiet time to think about her blog.
No, I’ll be OK, but I’m sleeping on the sofa tonight. I throw more logs onto the fire beneath the towering stone chimney in the living room, giving the embers a bit of a poke with the brass stick thing like I know what I’m doing, and make myself comfy on the deep sofa, pulling a furry blanket over me. The Christmas tree towers above my head and I notice there’s a big basket of baubles and carved wooden snowflakes waiting expectantly beside it. I thought I’d done all my Christmas admin for this year. Tree-trimming will have to wait until tomorrow. I’ve got dancing flames and glowing logs to gaze at.
As I settle myself, listening to the crackles and sparks from the hearth, Stellan’s note still clasped in my hand, I think about how tonight must have felt for him.
He must have been horrified to learn some old flame was staying in his resort. No wonder he raced out to find me. He must be wondering what I’m doing here, what exactly it is that I want, though I don’t actually have any answers. We were lovers long ago, yes, but time has passed.I’vechanged, even if he’s gone back to his old ways. He was as disarmingly taciturn and economical with his small talk as he was on the day we met. Maybe he was worried I’d have a blond-haired, pale-eyed fifteen-year-old in tow. God, he must have got a real fright! I should have tried harder to reach out to him before now. But, he’s thirty-six now and not a brooding twenty-one-year-old, all shy and reserved around strangers. I’m hoping he’ll have thawed a bit more by morning.
Nari certainly didn’t think much of him, even after I’d reminded her at dinner about what she wrote in her blog: that Finnish men are sometimes more formal and less cocky than English lads. She just raised an eyebrow at that. Though Stellan’s friend Niilo didn’t exactly hold back, did he? Nari’s only been at the resort for eight hours and he’s sent her a gift. I drift off feeling hopeful for tomorrow’s sightseeing. Whatever Stellan’s like now, I’m determined to enjoy my Lapland escape.
Chapter Ten
At Stellan’s simple cabin out in the woods, far from Sylvie, Nari and the other tourists, Niilo pads into his friend’s kitchen and grabs a pack of beers from the fridge.
‘Stellan,mä meen saunaan tänään. You coming? I’ve got the beer.’
‘Sure, give me a minute.’ Stellan drags his eyes from his phone, which he’s been silently absorbed with for the last half hour. Standing, he lifts the loops of rope from across his body up over his head and hangs them on a hook by the door.
‘The dogs are fed and asleep already. Did you lock them in?’ asks Niilo.
‘Mm-hmm. You ready?’ Stellan brushes past his friend as he gathers up two towels from a basket by the door. He looks back at his phone on the kitchen table before throwing off his thick jacket.
Niilo knows to give Stellan his space. All he needs is a quiet beer and a good sweat and he’ll soon be back to his usual self. Stellan always finds the wilderness trails tough but tonight he seems especially weary and in need of their daily sauna ritual.
Niilo follows his friend out of the cabin and along the raised wooden platform to the sauna door where Stellan is struggling with the key. The building has been locked up and cold for five nights and the lock is frozen, but after blowing hot breath into its chamber, Stellan slips the key inside and the mechanism is freed.
Stepping inside, the men shut out the night-time world and all its coldness, stripping the many layers of clothing from their tired bodies in companionable silence, something they’ve done almost every night of their friendship.
It has been five years since Niilo arrived at Stellan’s resort looking for work, and slowly over the months and years that followed, the quiet, reticent Stellan had become his firm friend. In all that time Niilo has never seen Stellan so shaken and uncomfortable as he was tonight when the red-haired English woman and her beautiful friend flew in for Christmas.
They take turns using the sauna’s shower. Stellan goes first. By the time Niilo has washed away the grime of the long wilderness trail his body feels lighter and his muscles are beginning to relax. As he steps up and in through the smoked glass door of the sauna room he feels the heat has already built up from thekiuas, the electric heater in the centre of the room, constructed to resemble the traditional wood burner.
‘It’s already cosy,’ says Stellan as he cracks open a beer can and hands it to Niilo who nods his gratitude, sitting down beside Stellan on the wooden bench.
‘Kippis,’ the men say in unison as they touch beer cans together before taking long slow swallows.
After agreeing long ago that it felt inappropriate to drink alcohol while guiding the tourists on the trails because they needed to stay sharp at all times, they haven’t touched a drop in almost a week. They never know when one of their charges might turn ill or injure themselves and they need to be in control if anything did happen. So far they’ve been lucky, but Niilo, always mindful of the scar across his cheekbone, never underestimates how easily an emergency could arise. For now they are back at the resort, warm and safe.
The cold beer slips down their thrown-back throats, refreshing and sharp, as the temperature rises. The glass door is already obscured with condensation. Stellan closes his eyes and stretches his arms out along the back of the bench, bringing his feet up to rest on the low wall edging thekiuaspit, but Niilo can tell his friend isn’t fully able to surrender himself to the warmth and relaxation as he usually does. Tonight Stellan is troubled and needing time with his thoughts, so Niilo turns the dial on the wall, feeling the surging heat, and sits back against Stellan’s forearm, breathing in the hot dry air. He has his own thoughts to process.
‘Stellan?’ he asks after a long silence.
‘Hmm?’
‘Tonight I met my soulmate.’ Niilo offers this up with confident, smiling certainty.
Stellan opens his eyes and sniffs, hunching his body forward, crossing his arms over his knees.
‘Sylvie’s friend? How can you know she’s yoursoulmate?’
‘I just know. I knew Nari was on her way to me before I even set eyes on her. I knew out on the trail that she was coming.’
Stellan smiles wryly and shakes his head, perspiration beading around his temples. The thermometer on the wall has reached ninety degrees and is climbing steadily.
‘What is it?’ says Niilo, knowing his friend is brooding over an objection. ‘Tell me.’
‘I’d just be careful with that one, OK? She’s exactly the kind of woman you usually steer clear of.’
