I unwrap the standard Christmas pyjamas and the big selection box that I always get – thank goodness they didn’t stop that tradition when I’d bemoaned it as a moody, embarrassed fourteen-year-old.
Everything is familiar and simple, the way it always is at home. It’s not quite Christmas, but it’s good all the same.
We demolish the big box of Roses chocolates and Dad spends a long time flicking through theTV Times, which they only ever buy at Christmas, the sight of which always fills me with wistful nostalgia for Christmases past.
As the day wears on I pour out the red wine and help set out the massive cheese board on the coffee table. Despite feeling too full to contemplate it now, I know in ten minutes I’ll find I can manage a nibble.
‘Show us Nari’s blog then,’ says Mum, stretching out on the sofa in her new Christmas slippers – exactly identical to the pair Dad gave her last year, but we hadn’t said anything, and he was oblivious as I watched Mum surreptitiously kick the old pair under the sofa and slip into the new ones, exclaiming how comfy they were. ‘Just what I needed,’ she’d said.
I open the cover of Mum’s tablet and search for Nari’s blog.
‘Here it is.’ I scroll back a few posts, handing it over and watching as Mum and Dad digest the details of the husky trip, the food, Sámi culture, the sauna rituals, and the lovely cabins.
I’d already caught up with the blog posts back at my flat, but I knew Nari had one last Lapland post scheduled for the year and it was going to appear any second now.
Mum’s holding the tablet an inch from her nose, struggling without her reading glasses. ‘Who’s that? she says.
‘That’s Toivo.’ I try to say it like a normal, rational human would, but my throat tightens, making me sound hoarse and emotional.
‘What a lovely dog,’ Mum’s saying, peering very closely at his sweet little face. ‘Who’s that holding him?’
‘That’s Stellan.’
If they recognise his name, Mum and Dad do a good job of hiding it. I had neglected to tell them that the owner of Frozen Falls was my ex-boyfriend from infinity ago. No point mentioning it now, I think.
That’s when Mum suddenly knits her brows and crumples her lips, deep in thought. ‘Stellan?’ she says and looks from me to Dad. You cannot get one over on Mum, she’s like a romantic Dr Watson, sniffing out every hint of each torrid, confused dating drama I ever had. ‘YourStellan?’
Well there you go. They do remember! I suppose they did drive through the night to pick me up from my halls of residence after it dawned on me that Stellan really wasn’t coming back. They’d found me out on the street in the sleeting rain clutching the note he’d left me. “Please forgive me. I’m going home. I won’t be back. Sylvie, please try to forget about me”, it had read, followed by the immortally hideous line, “It isn’t you, it’s me”.
Thinking about it, they’re unlikely to forget the weeks that followed when I stayed in bed, living off drinking chocolate and little snack boxes of raisins, writing letter after letter that I could never send because the Finnish postal service would be hard pushed to deliver thirty-five tear-stained envelopes addressed only to “Stellan Virtanen, somewhere near Saariselkä”.
I’m saved from a Mumquisition by the pinging notification on my phone that tells me Nari’s new post’s gone live.
‘Scroll down her blog, Mum. There’s the new one now.’
I read it off my phone screen, feeling like one of the family is missing, and wishing Nari was with us now.
Readers, you know me well enough by now to know that I can’t lie to you. I’ve been home from Lapland for five days and I’m supposed to be planning my adventures for the coming year. I mean, there are literally hundreds of things I should be doing: booking flights and transfers, researching hotels and restaurants, finding out where there’s a hidden gem bookstore or a mama and papa’s cafe making the best waffles in the world. I should be counting out strange new currencies and trying to figure out if the bashed-up little coin I’m holding is the equivalent of a dollar or fifty quid. I should be blogging my heart out with excitement about all the new people I’m going to meet; school kids and gap-year girls, local dignitaries and dodgy souvenir sellers.
And the romance novels. I should be telling you about the beach reads I’ve got packed and how I’ll be reading stories set in the very towns and cities I’m planning on visiting. And maybe I should be reflecting on the fact that no matter how far I travel, how many hands I shake or glasses I lift with a toast in the local dialect, no matter how many empty beaches I stroll along at sunset feeling self-sufficient and independent, I might actually be starting to get a bit fed up of solo travel, and wondering why I never actually meet someone I really like while I’m away.
Except this time I did meet someone. And he’s the reason for all this… whatever this is that’s stopping me planning for my next dream destination. You’ve probably already guessed? The herder? Well, you’re right. I met a guy called Niilo and we shared an incredible adventure together in Lapland.
But right now, I’m in Cheshire looking at an empty suitcase and a stack ofLonely Planetguides for all the places I’m supposed to be jetting off to this year, and all I can think about is where Niilo might be and wondering if he’s thinking about me too. I don’t know what to do. He is my new dream destination.
Signing off, Nari
#LeftmyHeartinLapland
The coffee pot arrives and I find I can manage another plateful of cheese and crackers, as it happens. And I end up telling Mum and Dad about Nari and Niilo, and then I tell them about Stellan, keeping it all strictly chaste, but blushing wildly as they listen to me, Mum nodding matter-of-factly, taking it all in.
My story ends with me on the verge of tears, blowing my nose, and Dad shuffling to the edge of his chair and uttering the words I’ve heard oh, so many times before.
‘Did I ever tell you the story of how your mother and I met?’
Oh Jesus. ‘Only a few thousand times, Dad.’
‘Really? Surely not?’ he says, looking puzzled.
