‘Good work,’ Nari says with a nod, pulling a ‘fair-do’s’ sort of expression.
‘Thanks.’
‘Why did you tell him you wanted a baby? You don’t, do you?’
‘Because that’s the sort of thing I do, apparently. I scare men away with oversharing and desperation.’
She just laughs and shakes her head. ‘So, was it as good as the Noughties, then? Did you go retro and make out to NSYNC? Did he stay over? Ooh, did he make you breakfast in bed?’
This is when I falter, feeling like a fool as I tell her how it all ended so abruptly last night. ‘Well, there was some kissing involved, yes… and it was beginning to feel like it did back then.’ Better, I think actually, way better. ‘But,’ I huff a ragged sigh. ‘But we were making out and waiting for some Christmas cookies that were baking in the oven—’
‘Hold the phone! You came all the way to Lapland looking for the man you had the best sex of your life with, and you baked cookies?’
‘Yes, and it was nice,’ I protest, but she’s right, it did all turn into a bit of an anticlimax – excuse the pun.
‘Well, things were turning interesting when there was this banging at the door. It was one of the resort staff. He barked something at Stellan – in Finnish, so I had no idea what was going on – and Stellan said he had to go. He grabbed Toivo and left in the guy’s truck. And I was left to eat six Christmas cookies all by myself in a strange country on Christmas Eve.’ OK, it was twelve cookies, and they were amazing – you’d have done the same, given the circumstances. ‘By six o’clock I was in bed, alone, watching telly in Finnish because I couldn’t get the stupid remote control thingy to work.’
‘Sylvie! Why didn’t you knock on my door? I was back home and on my own by half nine.’
‘You’re kidding? I thought you had the perfect date planned with Niilo?’
Nari shrugs and looks down towards her feet as we shuffle through the snow. ‘I thought we were talking aboutyourdate.’
I give her a hard stare.
‘Oh, all right! It just didn’t seem to work out, somehow. Niilo lookedsogood in a white shirt and black jeans, and he was polite and asked me lots of questions and hereallylistened to the answers – and you know how rare that is – but we just didn’t click this time. I don’t know what went wrong.’
I watch her as she thinks for a moment and notice her look of sudden embarrassment.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
She sighs. ‘Itmighthave been my fault… a little bit, if I’m honest. I insisted we go searching for Lappish club land – kind of a long shot, I know. He really tried his best, but it was all a bit dire. He was like a fish out of water and I just felt totally stupid and spoiled for asking the impossible. And did you know he’s only twenty-nine?Twenty. Nine.I usually love discovering rando clubs but, next to Niilo, who had the good sense to know the place was rubbish, I just felt ancient and ridiculous. And then…’
‘Oh God, there’smore?’
‘Strap in, Sylve, thereismore! When he dropped me off at the cabin, he saw Stephen had sent me this hideous, gaudy bouquet of flowers – who knows how, he must have had them choppered in or something – and there were these massive strawberries too. Niilo took one look at them and bolted.’
‘Strawberries and roses? These Lapland men are easily spooked.’
Nari gives me an ‘ain’t that the truth’ kind of look, and I suddenly feel as though it’s only charitable to share the horrid embarrassment of my date in all its cringey awfulness.
‘OK, well this’ll make you feel better,’ I say. ‘Last night Stellan told me the reason he dumped me when we were students was because he thought he was spoiling my chances of a successful career. And the more I thought about it after he’d left, the more I felt like I really must have been a nightmare girlfriend. Was I really so mad about him that I scared him off?’
Nari’s diplomatic silence isn’t lost on me.
‘Even if I was, it’s a bit of an overreaction, isn’t it?Oh no, this girl’s so into me, I must leave her immediately so she can rediscover herself!You and I both know I never had any burning desire to graduate top of my class or to win a Teacher of the Year award or anything. And so what if I’d flunked my degree first time around? I’d have managed somehow, even if I was all screwed up with love and high on Stellan Virtanen pheromones. I’d have been happy taking a job waxing Piers Morgan’s back, sack and crack if I still got to go home to Stellan every night.’
Nari pulls a revolted, dubious face at this. ‘You say that now, but that’s because you’ve got a job you love and a nice flat and enough money to pay for all the things you needandsome of the things you fancy. Doesn’t a small part of you think maybe he did the right thing after all, the mature thing, even if he went about it the wrong way?’
I let this sink in, and grudgingly admit she might be right.
‘Well, maybe a teensy part of me, but he could at least have stuck around for a while to see if it all worked itself out. I never got the chance to find out how it could have been between us, long term.’
As we arrive at the restaurant and strip off our snowsuits, hanging them on hooks by the door, a little pang rises in my chest as it occurs to me that we might still have split up, but for much sadder reasons, like trying and failing to make a go of things long-distance. How would I have visited him at Frozen Falls when I was a skint teenager? How would he have made time for me and got away from the resort after his dad fell ill? We’d have fizzled out to nothing. Maybe.
Inside the restaurant, there are squat red candles burning on every table, and Christmas carols playing over the speakers. We’re arriving late to breakfast but there’s still plenty of food at the buffet. The restaurant staff are all wearing the traditional clothing of their home countries, and I’m aware of a multitude of languages being spoken all around me and realising for the first time how this community of Frozen Falls workers are actually a little world in microcosm, all brought together by the need to work and the wonder of the snowy season in the frozen North.
The few children staying at the resort seem to have abandoned their breakfasts and are driving remote-controlled cars and playing with bright plastic figures on the floor by their parents’ tables.
