“Mistletoe, surely then one has to be allowed to give the most beautiful woman on the island a kiss?”
Emelie didn’t have the time to answer before Christer came into the room and Andreas pulled her into the great hall so quickly that she almost tripped.
“What the…”
“I just wanted to save you from Christer in case he got into the Christmas spirit and wanted to kiss you too,” Andreas laughed. “Now I have to continue bringing in the amaryllis and the hyacinths.”
He left Emelie with blushing cheeks and Christer gave her an insinuating look and smiled, but she wasn’t going to give him any explanations.
“All right, Christer, let’s take one last round.”
In the great hall, there was a salesman arranging ceramic Santas, Oskar’s father who was going to be selling and nuts, a couple of salesmen making Christmas hay goats, a man from the mainland selling sausage and all the tables where clearly marked with their number and standing in the correct place.
“Here’s number nine,” Christer said.
Emelie looked down on her iPad.
“Number nine, that’s spices, Carina…”
She bit her tongue, that was Christer’s ex-wife. She hadn’t told him that she was going to show up for the market and she didn’t want to ruin his good mood.
“Yes, she doesn’t arrive until tomorrow,” she continued.
Emelie couldn’t interpret Christer’s facial expression.
“Spices, my wife and I used to sell spices, it was very popular until…”
He sighed deeply and he sounded even sadder than it usually did.
“I hate Scanians, I really do,” he said, staring down into the floor.
Emelie gave his arm a light stroke and suggested that they go outside and check the tables out there too. The had started walking towards the door when she saw a man who came rushing towards them.
“How the hell did you plan this?”
The man was quite big and wearing a leather west over his checkered shirt and it was dangerously tight over his big belly. His big beard jumped up over his angrily grinding jaws and Emelie nervously took a step back not to get hit by his saliva.
“Hello! How can I help you?”
“Help me! Ha! I’m selling sausages and other delicacies such as burnt almonds and now you have put some idiot selling nuts and chocolate on one side of me and a whole bloody café on the other side!”
Emelie’s heart was beating, and she tried to find Christer, but he was nowhere to be found. She looked down at her iPad. They had been so thorough with their placement of the different salespeople; had they actually made a mistake and placed this man next to someone selling the same thing as him?
“Just a second, let me double check.”
“Check!? You’ll just have to solve this, throw them out. I have travelled all the way from Sundsvall for this!”
Her hand was shaking as she looked through the applications that she had sorted into different files. Suddenly Linn came into the room, beaming with joy and with a plastic tray with fragrant content in her arms.
“Hello, everything worked out exactly as you said, I got to borrow Andreas’ oven and here’s a batch of freshly baked Lucia buns!”
Emelie looked at the angry salesman - he looked like someone who had a sweet tooth.
“Bengt, this is Linn who has the café next to your stand, won’t you help her try some of her homemade Lucia buns while I work this one out?”
She had guessed correctly, Bengt’s face lit up when he saw the golden Lucia buns and him and Linn were soon involved in a lively discussion about saffron and butter by one of the little café tables. Emelie checked the applications and saw that Bengt had written that he was going to sell sausage – and nothing else – that explained it. She walked over to Bengt and Linn but before she had the time to say anything, Bengt put a hand on her arm.
“Hey, I’m sorry for making a fuss, it will be just fine being next to this nice café tomorrow,” he said, and she saw that he had a thin line of powdered sugar in his moustache.
