I sensibly lean back, keeping my boots on the ice as I slide, trying to slow myself down, and I watch as a toddler stuffed rigidly into a padded snowsuit overtakes me at speed, giggling wildly.
I see Nari down at the bottom, lit by floodlights, crashing her toboggan into the great fluffy snowdrift intended to help lunatics make emergency stops. She immediately gets to her feet, dusts the snow from her knees, and turns to look back up the slope towards me. She’s smirking and jabbing a mittened index finger at an invisible watch on her wrist. She can mock all she wants, I think, as I sail downhill at my own stately pace.
‘Do we even have insurance for this sort of thing?’ I ask as I come to a leisurely halt and Nari helps to haul me up.
‘Of course, all taken care of,’ she grins.
‘Stephen again?’
‘Yep. See you in a sec.’
‘Woah, woah, where are you racing off to?’ I say, catching Nari’s arm.
‘Back to the top.’
‘What? You said we ought totrytobogganing. I’ve tried it, now let’s find a bar while the going’s good and we’ve got all our limbs intact.’
‘One more go. Come on. You might even want to put your feetinsidethe toboggan this time.’
Nari’s hard to say no to, so I relent, and we make our way up the treacherously frozen steps which, to my mind, are as lethal as the slope itself. Kids jostle and weave past us on their way up, laughing and screaming with delight. I don’t know where they get their energy from. My thigh muscles are burning with the exertion, made even worse by the weight of the snowsuit and boots.
‘So, tell me then,’ I puff. ‘What did Niilo talk about all day? I could hear you two chattering all the way along the trail.’ We’re at the top again, and my lungs are close to bursting.
‘Oh, all sorts. He’s really interesting, you know.’ She lays her toboggan down near the edge, and I do the same. ‘He’s full of facts about Finland, and he’s polite and he’s attractive…’ We sit side by side and face the slope. ‘And, do you know, I discovered he’s got anabsolutely enormous…’
The rest of her sentence is lost in the rushing air as she zooms off down the hill without any warning, and I’m surprised to find I’m hurrying to catch her, pushing myself over the edge.
‘What?’ I shout towards her back which is rapidly disappearing ahead of me. I follow behind, only this time around I’m going much,muchfaster. ‘An absolutely enormouswhat?’
It’s at this point that I hit the first of the moguls: great mounds of hard snow peppering this, far steeper, side of the run; the kind of thing you see skiers negotiating on the winter Olympics. Except I’m not a rugged Olympian on the telly; I’m a history teacher on a tray, and I’m terrified. My screams fill the air and my eyeballs are popping so far out of my head they’re close to freezing.
I hit the bottom of the run in seconds, having been bumped and jolted and almost thrown clean off this hideous contraption. Nari’s standing over me as I come to an inelegant stop and struggle to straighten my bobble hat and catch my breath.
“Enormous what?’ I gasp.
‘Herd of reindeer.’
I watch her walking away, her laughter clouding the air.
Nari buys me a cup of tea at the booth by the exit from the slopes, by way of an apology, and we make our way back towards Saariselkä town centre, a good ten minutes’ walk away. The early evening is completely dark apart from the streetlights and the alluring glow of store windows and restaurant signs in the distance. Occasionally, a car crawls past on the icy road. Nari and I cling together so we don’t slip on the shining ice coating the well-trodden pavements.
‘I don’t know, we just talked. It was nice. And surprisingly easy,’ Nari is saying. ‘Niilo told me all about his life before he moved to the resort. He said he was averrde, I think that’s what he called it, a kind of helper on reindeer migrations. He told me he used to travel with his family’s own herds when he was tiny. They let herder families have special holidays from school to travel with their animals to the calving and pasture areas. But when he left school he became a helper with other people’s herds. That’s how he made his living for years, he said. He’s crossed Finnish Lapland many times on foot and skidoo. Imagine that! But then he came back here, where his family once lived, and he got work with Stellan and settled down. He said Stellan helped him out at a time when he really didn’t know what to do with his life, and he had no reindeer herd of his own. It was quite sweet really, the way he spoke about him. Maybe I’ve got your grumpy Finn all wrong? What do you reckon?’
I shrug off this diversion. ‘We’re talking about you, Nari. What else did Niilo tell you?’
‘He told me some stuff about Sámi culture and said I could use some of it in the blog if I wanted, so that was nice. And he asked me lots of questions.’
‘About the blog?’
‘No, not really, about my life. He wanted to know about my travel books, so I told him where he could find them online, and he seemed fascinated by all the places I’ve been. I told him about the baby turtles hatching on the beaches at Isla Los Brasiles, and that Machu Picchu eco-tourism holiday I did – remember the one with the litter picking along the trails? And when I told him about the hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings he looked amazed, as though I was describing a trip to Mars! He wasn’t like other blokes though, always wondering aloud why I want to travel alone, asking me if it isn’t too risky. He just seemed to understand.’
‘But you’re going to see him again this trip, aren’t you?’ I can’t help delving, I need to know.
‘I said I’d have to talk with you first, see if you didn’t mind. He asked me to meet him tomorrow after his reindeer safari trips for the tourists, three o’clock, he said. But I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone if you don’t have plans.’
I think about my arrangement with Stellan and wince. I hadn’t even considered what it might mean to Nari to spend the day alone, I’d just agreed to go. I’m a terrible friend.
‘It’s OK, I do have plans, and even if I didn’t, I’d want you to go and see Niilo. How often do you actually like a guy?’
