She took a step back, admiring at her notice:
We are starting up the old Christmas market!
At the community centre, December 14th.
Dance around the tree, meet Santa Claus, take our quiz, sales stands and Astrid’s café.
If you want to help, rent a table or perform your special talent, contact Emelie Svensson before October 15th. Come and join us and help revive the old tradition – Christmas market at Sardinön!”
The cursive font of the text was surrounded by poinsettias, Christmas ornaments and pine wreaths; images she had found and downloaded from the internet. Anders was standing next to her and put a friendly arm around her shoulders.
“That will be great, we are so happy that you have moved to the island and for the market initiative. And I will take this opportunity and say that we are so happy to have Linn working here in the shop, the missus and I. It isn’t every day that you find such a gem of an employee. Not to mention how much Oskar likes her!”
He squeezed her shoulder and laughed, loud and boisterously, and then excused himself, saying he had to return to work. Emelie shook her head, feeling concerned as she watched him walk towards the storage room, cheerfully greeting everyone on his way. He wouldn’t laugh as much if he found out that Linn was fooling around with Oskar. She had to talk to Linn, even if she didn’t know how to initiate the conversation. She sighed heavily, walked into the store and picked up a jar of cottage cheese and a couple of bananas for her single mum-lunch.
Emelie moved Linn’s shopping lists and a roll of baking sheets to the side to make room for her lunch plate and her computer. The kitchen table really was way too small, she would ask Andreas to make her a new one. She sat down, daydreaming about tearing down walls, repainting the chairs. Then she opened her laptop and clicked into the Facebook event that she had created especially for the Christmas market. She saw the pictures she had uploaded and the texts she had written for the event. Social media really wasn’t her thing, but this had turned out great. She started wondering if Andreas was into social media. She tried to push the thoughts of him away and focus instead, but her fingers had gotten a life of their own and started typing his name on the keyboard. There he was, he had a Facebook profile. He clicked on his profile picture and his beautiful eyes were looking straight into the camera and straight into her. Something small and warm started to move inside of her. She chuckled, his last post was from a sunset last summer, so apparently, he was about as active as she was online. For some reason that made her feel relieved, and she clicked back into the Christmas market event. As the number of people who had clicked ‘interested’ showed up, she could hardly believe her eyes. Fifty people had clicked that they were coming! And 183 likes – Christ!”
She got up, dancing a little dance around the table before sitting down and looking again. Could it really be true? Oh yes, fifty people were interested in the event, and it was only August and still warm outside. There were a couple of comments as well, and she started to look through them. One hour later she had finished her lunch, read through all the positive comments, sorted out the questions she received and put them under different headlines in an Excel-file. The questions were all about renting a table, what people wanted to sell and how much it would cost. Emelie felt slightly panicked, was she in over her head this time? She quickly started counting and planning. They had room for 20 salesmen, one table was reserved for her and the girls, so there were 19 remaining. What if she had to prioritise? She had already gotten requests from about 15 people. And what would they charge for the tables? She found Christer’s number in her phone.
“Hello Christer, it’s Emelie, how are you?”
“Doing better and better.”
“Lovely to hear. I have some questions regarding the market.”
She took a deep breath.
“We have 19 tables and I’ve already gotten requests from 15 people who are interested.”
“What kind of people? No townsfolk, right?”
“Yes Christer, some of them are town people,” Emelie said in a tired voice. “But how should I go about choosing who gets a table, and how much should we charge?”
Christer explained that he used to try and make sure that most of the salespeople came from the island, and that they were offering different items. They agreed on what to charge per table and that Emelie would come and visit Christer the following day because, as he put it, some salesmen didn’t offer any quality goods, and they had to be prepared for those.
“Have you spoken to the teacher regarding the Lucia procession now that school has started?”
The door opened and she looked at the watch.
“Christer, I’m going to need to run, I’ve invited half the school over for coffee and cake and forgotten to make the coffee, but I’ll have a chat with the teacher about Lucia tomorrow and then I’ll pop by your place, around 10 a.m., is that okay?”
“It’s perfect, bring some cake.”
“Mom, we’re home!”
She hung up and sent Liv upstairs to shower since she smelled like a barn. Liv and Kajsa ran chatting up the stairs. Halfway up, Liv turned around.
“Mum, guess what? I’m going to get to care for a horse by myself. Kajsa’s mum has a horse named Tellus and it’s just the sweetest, and she doesn’t have time to look after him. Kajsa’s mum is going to give you a ring, but you’ll say yes, right?”
Emelie looked at her sweet, excited daughter who smelled like a farm boy and had hay sticking out of her curls. Emelie herself found horses quite large and quite scary these days, but she knew wouldn’t be able to say no.
“I’ll talk to Kajsa’s mum. Hurry up now, the others will be here soon.”
Chapter 17
Emelie had got into the habit of walking Liv and Linnea to school in the mornings. Emelie loved getting up and starting her day, but the best reward was getting to share a relaxed breakfast with the girls, talking about everything. Most of the time she would wave goodbye to them in the crossing right before school and take off towards the ocean to either take a powerwalk or go jogging. This morning she followed them all the way to school in order to catch their teacher for a chat about the Lucia procession. There was still summer in the air, but in the mornings you could feel a premonition of autumn. There was a crisp chill in the air, and she was happy that they had put their wind jackets on. When they reached the school yard, Liv waved to her, running over to Kajsa and a pair of twins from her grade, Tindra and Vilda. Linnea knew exactly which girl that was which, even though Emelie couldn’t tell the difference at all. Linnea gave her a quick hug before starting to play with Tore and a couple of other children who were running around with their mobile phones on the hunt for Pokémon. Emelie looked at her watch. It was ten minutes before the bell would ring, maybe she would have time to catch the teacher before class started. The old blue-grey wooden door was right in the middle of the red brick building and above the door was an old-fashioned bell that was still used for ringing in and out of class. The children’s schoolteacher was in the classroom writing on the blackboard.
“Hello there Emelie, I won’t shake hands now if you don’t mind, I have so much chalk dust all over me. I’ve asked for a modern whiteboard for several years now, but it seems incredibly difficult to squeeze into the budget,” she said, rolling her eyes.
