by Kiley Dunbar
* * *
It’s pitch dark when I wake up and I seem to be dry mouthed and frozen on the floor. I want to say this has never happened before as it doesn’t exactly cast me in a good light, but I’ll admit it has.
I scrabble for the light switch by the bed and squint at the bare Christmas tree across the hall in my moonlit living room. Mary and Joseph, it’s cold in here! So much for cosying up the flat for Christmas.
I can see my mobile flashing on the hall table and drag myself to my feet. It’s gone four in the morning; Bublé and bubbly must have laid me out cold. I put the kettle on and dial my voicemail, and of course it’s Nari.
‘All right, Sylve? Well, I’ve given Stephen a good chatting to via FaceTime, and it was all very cordial. He’s asked his PA to sort out a refund for you; it was all booked through one of his subsidiaries, apparently. The full amount will be back in your parents’ account by morning. And he’s got two Finnish Lapland options for us, both leaving on the twenty-second: there’s a hotel in the middle of Rovaniemi, I think it was, or a couple of log cabins somewhere near a ski resort called Saariselkä. Let me know which you fancy and I’ll finalise the details tomorrow. Oh, and I think I’ve got myself a New Year’s date in London. I guess Stephen needed a little reminder of what he’s been missing; he’s jetting in specially. OK, nighty night.’
As I sip my coffee and wander around the flat closing curtains, adjusting the thermostat, and listening for the boiler coming on with a whoosh, I think how nice it was of Stephen to sort everything out like that. Even though I’m grateful, I can’t forget how much he hurt Nari, though I suspect he isn’t even aware of that fact, and Nari just pretends it’s all fine now. I wonder if this New Year’s date means he’s willing to commit this time? It sounds plausible if he’s coming all this way to see her, but I’ll believe it when I see it. Still, imagine having the power to just offer up two choices of holiday like that! I admit I’m impressed. What had Nari said? Rovaniemi or… and that’s when it clicks. Saariselkä? I’ve heard that before.
I grab my laptop and settle on the sofa while making a start on a Christmas Toblerone from one of the school kids. ‘Saariselkä… Saariselkä,’ I say in an increasingly over pronounced and inaccurate accent. I’m sure that’s where he was from. How many other Lappish towns has the average British woman heard of?
Right. Facebook. I’m in, and my fingers hesitate over the keyboard. ‘Stellan… Stellan…?’ What the hell was his surname? ‘V… Vir… Virtanen!’ That’s it! How many Stellan Virtanens can there be on Facebook? Ah, just the one then, and he appears to be a very small, very cute dog. I click on the blue-eyed husky pup avatar and hold my breath. Holy crap! It is him.
‘Stellan Virtanen. Saariselkä, Inari. Finnish Lapland. Studied Languages and Cultures at University of Lapland and Manchester University.’
Hmm, but that’s all I can see. He’s got his security settings on. Very sensible. You don’t know who’s creeping around your timeline and perving over your summer holiday snaps. Before I know what my stupid fingers are doing, they’ve sent a friend request, and I’m left feeling momentarily panicked, but the bubbly in my bloodstream simply shrugs and I let it go. Besides, my mind is busy elsewhere all of a sudden.
I know it’s a bit sad, and I know I shouldn’t, but it occurs to me that even though I can’t get a peek at what Stellan looks like now (probably paunchy and balding, I tell myself), I at least know where there are photographs of him from way back then. I just have to scale Box Mountain again.
Half an hour later, I’m on coffee number two, the Toblerone is history and I’ve finally found what I was looking for in the bottom of a box marked ‘University’ which has followed me from my halls of residence to Mum and Dad’s, to the Love Shack and now it’s here, and in all that time it’s never been opened.
From beneath ring binders filled neatly with my meticulously handwritten lecture notes (I was that nerd at uni; well, for the first half of my degree at least), I lift out the green faded T-shirt. It was his favourite. After we’d gotten to know each other I took to wearing it, wanting to stake my claim to gorgeous Stellan so the other girls knew he was with me. The T-shirt has spent the last fifteen years wrapped around a bundle of photographs. I crawl into bed with them and pull the duvet around me. OK, let’s see if I’m remembering him correctly.
And there he is. Blond, very blond, and serious-looking. There’s that furrow between his thick flaxen brows, and those pale brown eyes, the lightest I’d ever seen. As I inspect the image it hits me all over again, that familiar stomach flipping feeling I used to get when he looked at me like that. He really was something else.
There are a few more pictures of him taken at student parties, one where he is singing karaoke, his arms around his fellow exchange student friends’ necks, bottle of beer in hand. He’s at ease and grinning in that one and showing his deeply bowed lips curling over straight white teeth. He had the kind of smile people round here pay a fortune for.
And then I stop flipping through the images as my eyes fall upon one of us together. Who took this? I have no idea. It’s me and him sitting by a table piled with empty beer bottles and glasses at some hall party or other. I look so young, only nineteen and effortlessly pretty, though I had no idea of that fact back then. And we’re right in the centre surrounded on all sides by partying students. I can see someone’s got a guitar and people are singing. But Stellan and me look oblivious. We’re facing one another, the tip of my nose brushing his. His eyes are half open and his lips are parted for the kiss that was to come. He has that desirous, intense look on his face that I could have grown so used to, given half the chance. But what gets me in the pit of my stomach as I gaze into this glossy window into my past is the sight of Stellan’s fist twisting the hem of my top into a scrunched knot, the muscles in his forearm flexed and taut. For a second, tucked up alone in my bed, I can almost feel the graze of his knuckles on my skin as I, teenage Sylvie, sank into his kiss.
Placing the photo aside, I reach for what was once Stellan’s T-shirt, holding it at arm’s length as it unravels, and I read the faded lettering, ‘Lapland-Manchester Cultural Exchange 2004’. Obviously, giving it a little sniff would be weird, wouldn’t it?
I’d like to say that I didn’t hold the soft material to my face and inhale it like it was cocaine and I was an addict falling way off the wagon; I’d like to say that, but I’m pretty sure I drifted back to sleep moments later with Stellan’s T-shirt fully covering my face.
Maybe I was partially asphyxiated by the fabric, maybe it was the shock of finding him online, or maybe it was all the day’s talk of Lapland and those old photographs. Maybe that’s why Stellan Virtanen turned up in my sleep.
In the dream, I’m at one of those student parties. It’s late at night, the room is packed with people and there are disco lights spinning and sparkling everywhere. Stellan is smiling, his lips swollen from kissing me, and he’s leading me by the hand into one of the bedrooms. He lies back on the pile of coats in the dark as the door closes, and I lie down too.
My younger self’s body feels long and lithe beside him, and he’s so warm. He covers my mouth with his, and I let him, dizzy with the feeling of his full lips and the sound of his breathing. He takes his time, stretching the wide neck of my top down over my shoulder, and his mouth travels across my throat before placing a slow kiss into the hollow above my collar bone. He must be able to feel me trembling.
‘Should I stop?’ he asks in his heavenly accent as he pulls away cautiously, but I smile and shake my head, guiding his mouth back to mine.
His hand passes over my stomach and comes to a stop cradling my hip bone through my clothes before he shifts his body on top of mine and presses my legs apart with his thighs. He sinks down onto me, letting me feel the weight of his long muscular frame and his hardness through his jeans. I let my head roll back. I’ve never experienced anything like this before and I don’t want him to stop now, or ever.
I pull his plaid
shirt off his back, throwing it to the floor, before slowly lifting his T-shirt, letting my fingertips run up his sides, making him inhale sharply. As he breathes hot kisses on my neck, the ends of his clean scented hair fall against my face. My nerves prickle as his hand gently eases inside my jeans and I melt into the slow movement of his fingertips, wanting to arch my back under the weight of his body anchoring me down. In the dark I can see his eyes are open and he’s watching me, tantalised and smiling.
And then I wake up.
I lunge for my mobile and quickly type a message for Nari.
You said there was a choice of two Lapland destinations? I quite fancy Saariselkä.
Chapter Three
In late December I can usually hear the Christmas carols blaring out from the kitchen before I even get up my parents’ garden path. Their house always looks cosy and festive at this time of year. There are usually two holly bushes decorated with luscious red bows and topiaried into perfect spheres on either side of the porch and long strings of coloured fairy lights running around the window frames, but as I unlatch the gate it strikes me that they may have broken with tradition this year. Maybe Mum’s mixing it up a bit and the décor is all indoors for a change.
I ring the bell, knowing just what to expect. Even though it’s only the seventeenth of December, Mum will have been cooking for ages, there’ll be a big pot of mulled wine on the stove and a Christmas cake ready for cutting taking pride of place amidst the poinsettia and ivy decorations running the length of the dinner table. There’ll be a sprig of mistletoe over the living room doorframe and they’ll already have stopped a million times beneath it for a parental snog (I’ve spent my life swinging between extremes of thinking my parents are adorable lovebirds and recoiling in squirming horror – especially in my teenage years – seeing them kissing when they thought nobody was looking). Dad will have polished up all the silverware and a festive aperitif will be waiting for me in a twinkling champagne glass.
As I reach for the doorbell again, wondering why nobody’s answering, I’m struck by the strongest memory, the thing I loved best of all about Christmases past, and I can see it now so clearly: an image of Mum and me stirring up homemade Christmas puddings and a humungous, boozy fruit cake on the last Sunday before Advent, adding a gleaming sixpence to each one before they were baked. The sixpences had once belonged to Mum’s great, great auntie and were a treasured part of Mum’s festive rituals long before I was born. I was supposed to place one of those sixpences inside my shoe on my wedding day; a little reminder of home, family and happy times as I walked down the aisle, a precious token of good luck from Mum. I’m in danger of having a weepy wobble right here on the doorstep, but Dad appears just in time.
‘Sylvie! Come in. You’re early and we’re, um, not quite ready for dinner.’ Dad’s looking flustered as I head past him to the kitchen. ‘Just a minute, Sylve…’
I tell him not to worry, I already kicked my gritty boots off in the porch, but he’s still flustering behind me. There are some yummy cooking smells but, I notice, no music, no scented candles and no tree.
‘Is Mum ill?’
‘Eh, no, dear. Why do you ask?’
‘Everything’s… different,’ I say, as I catch my reflection in the hall mirror which is neither frosted with spray-on snowflakes nor adorned with tinsel. Something’s definitely up.
‘We thought, since we’re going away for Christmas, we needn’t bother with the whole palaver this year. No point letting a tree go to waste in an empty house, is there? Anyway, Sylvie…’
‘I suppose not.’ Dammit! Given the sorry state of my flat, I’d been hoping for a dose of familial festive cheer and, whilst I’m busy mourning the loss of Mum’s traditional Christmas, I don’t mind admitting I’d been looking forward to their obscenely expensive cheeseboard. Mum really goes to town for the holiday season, and I did too, until this year.
In Christmases past I’d have a six foot tree delivered to the Love Shack and even if Cole wasn’t around to help decorate it – I can only remember two occasions where he was, now I think about it – I’d make it pretty with the baubles Nari brought home for me from the festive markets she visited on her travels. She knew how much I loved this time of year and always indulged my festive obsession. I just don’t know where all that goodwill to mankind went after Cole ran off, but I’ve definitely lost my Christmas sparkle, and it looks like Mum and Dad have too.
‘Hold on, Sylvie, there’s someone…’ Dad’s trying to take my hand as I round the corner into the kitchen, clearly also a Christmas-free zone. I clock Mum looking harassed, standing over a pile of hotdog buns, brandishing a knife as she slits them down the centre. Dad overtakes me inside the doorway and hurriedly takes the knife from her. ‘We’ve got a visitor, actually, Sylvie, love.’
Suddenly, Mum’s stormy expression and Dad’s agitated blustering make sense. Cole is sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee. He’s in his pilot’s uniform. Shit! I hadn’t spotted his car outside.
‘I tried to tell you, Sylve,’ Dad says quietly.
The shock of seeing Cole is overwhelming and my first instinct is to run, but Mum has already crossed the room and has my hand in hers. She’s giving me a reassuring look but I know she’s seething inside.
‘Cole dropped by a moment ago, looking for you,’ she says stiffly.
He’s standing now and all six foot of him is slowly making its way over the floor towards me.
Don’t kiss me, don’t kiss me, don’t kiss me. I’d hate to collapse in a stupid heap on the floor. Too late, he’s bending down towards me. I hold my breath. But he suddenly stops, straightens up and takes a step back. He smells so nice, and so familiar; of spicy aftershave and somehow warm and indoorsy. There’s a wary look on his face. Maybe he thinks I’m going to knee him in the balls. His instincts are sharp. I resist the temptation, strong though it is.
‘I’m sorry to take you by surprise. I didn’t know your new address so I called in to ask Lynn and Malcolm.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
That’s it? Six months of plotting and planning my revenge, six months of imagining how this moment might play out, and all I can manage is ‘Oh’. In my fantasy scenarios I’m usually on the arm of a dashing stranger, dressed in a revealing evening gown and towering heels, my hair piled up in a gleaming tumble of curls. We’re at some fancy occasion, a Prime Ministerial ball or Royal wedding, you know the sort of thing. I smile viciously with blood-red lips as he crumbles at the sudden devastating realisation that he’s passed all this up. He falls to the ground and I step over his limp, twitching body, my stilettos piercing his flying jacket. That’s how it usually goes.
I hadn’t bargained for our first meeting since he dumped me taking place in Mum’s kitchen on a night damp and windy enough to have expanded my usually limp hair into a frizzy knotted nest-like affair, and I most definitely didn’t plan on greeting him with an unwashed face while wearing a pair of baggy at the knees joggers and a chuffing elf jumper. I look down my body and cringe in shame, letting my carrier bags of Christmas shopping fall to the floor.
Cole looks even better than I remember. Nothing about this is fair.
‘What do you want?’ I manage, barely able to look at his face. Dad’s by my side now too, looping his arm in mine.
‘I, uh… I brought these for you; some leftover things I thought you might want from the Love Sh… from the house, now that it’s sold.’
He holds out a lidless shoebox. I see dusty bottles of perfume, my cashmere bed socks, my unworn wedding garter belt – a confection of lace and white ribbon, still in its clear box – and a photograph in a frame, the sight of which sends me reeling all over again. It’s a picture of Barney. Our dog. My puppy. Dad sees me on the brink of tears and comes to my rescue.
‘Let me take your shopping, Sylve. Have a seat in the lounge and I’ll bring you a drink. We’re trying out some New York nosh tonight and I’ve got you some root beer to go with your chilli dogs.’ He’s circ
ling a reassuring palm over my shoulders. ‘Will you be staying for dinner, Cole?’ he adds, with a curtness I rarely hear in Dad’s voice.
‘No he won’t, thanks Dad,’ I say, scowling at Cole who truly looked as though he were about to accept the invitation. Unbelievable! I can see I’m not the only one missing my parents’ cosy Christmases. God knows, the alternate years we spent at Patricia’s were so relentlessly grim and joyless, he really must regret losing out on the relaxed, cosy welcome of Mum and Dad’s festivities.
Mum grabs the shoebox from Cole as we make our way to the living room where only a solitary candelabra on the windowsill lifts the gloom and signals that it’s supposed to be the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.
Cole closes the door behind him and comes to perch beside me on the sofa. He’s struggling to form his words and I have no intention of helping him out. I watch him as he nervously reaches a fingertip inside his smart collar and tries to loosen it. A big gulp moves his Adam’s apple and I emphatically do not think about how sexy his throat is.
‘So… how have you been?’ he manages.
I’m not answering that. What can he possibly expect me to say? I glare at him in silence and pull one of Mum’s cushions up over my belly, curling my legs beneath me, wanting to shrink from his gaze and make myself as small as possible.