by Kiley Dunbar
‘It was lovely getting to know you better. When you weren’t being cold or pedantic, I really, really… liked you,’ I garble. I see him smile grimly at this, and I keep talking. ‘I wanted to know you from the first second we met at uni, Stellan Virtanen. I thought you were gorgeous, actually, that night at the exchange students’ welcome party… when I first saw you.’ The string of sounds coming from my mouth fall flat in their inadequacy. Stellan’s holding me stiffly around my waist now.
‘I remember,’ he says. ‘I thought you were amazing too. But that wasn’t the first time I saw you.’
‘It wasn’t?’
‘No. I saw you the day before, in the corridor, when you were pinning the notice about the welcome party on the board. And I thought you were beautiful. I came to that party hoping to meet you.’
I rush out a breath, wide-eyed with surprise. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’
‘There are a lot of things I should have told you.’
Exasperated and now utterly wordless, I can only look at him. Stellan seems to be retreating again and he looks glad of the interruption as Nari barges against the door from the other side, making it bump against my hip.
In the string of apologies that follow, and with Nari shouting instructions to hurry up, and the heaving of our bags into the boot of the cab, there’s no time for any other kind of goodbye.
As I fasten my seatbelt, the arctic wind slams my door shut and I helplessly watch Stellan on the steps of my vacant cabin, his eyes shining and watery from the whipping gale coming in from the north. We wave through glass as the car starts, and in seconds he’s out of sight.
I see nothing of the Lappish landscape in the late dawn light as we race to the airport, the tyres crunching over ice. I tell myself our reunion has been perfect, passionate and fun (until I spoiled it), and that now I’m fortified with the knowledge that he loved me once, and that’s better than nothing. In fact, it’s all I’m getting, so I’ll try to be glad.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
‘Hi honey, I’m home,’ I say into the silence of a Castlewych Boxing Day afternoon as I shut the door behind me, trundling my suitcase over the small pile of Christmas cards on the mat.
My flat’s freezing and, I notice for the first time as I turn the thermostat up and click every light in the place on, surprisingly bare and sparse-looking. I don’t remember it being so bland and unwelcoming. I really must get some pictures up, maybe some colourful blankets and some rugs. Perhaps a proper fire with flames, and some candles?
I pour some water into the pot concealing the cut, dry stump of the Christmas tree in the lounge. Still wearing my coat, I hang the bauble I brought with me from the tree at Frozen Falls that Stellan and I decorated, and I watch as the branches instantly shed half their needles onto the living room carpet.
Vacuuming up the sharp browning spikes, I try not to let in the memories that the tree’s scent conjures up in my head: snowy Lappish forests and festively decorated fireside scenes in a cosy cabin, and Stellan, warm, broad, and beautiful in his woollen jumper with his blond-white hair and pale eyes.
Air traffic control to Sylvie. Prepare for landing. You’re home now, I tell myself, but I feel as though I’m still in the turbulent air. How can I be back here in my flat? I wasn’t done with my holiday. I wasn’t done with being in the presence of Stellan Virtanen.
I switch on the telly and turn up the volume as I empty the suitcase out, filling a laundry basket to take round to Mum and Dad’s when they get back from New York in a few days, and vowing that I must get a washing machine of my own in the January sales.
I put away the milk and bread I picked up at the motorway services on the way from the airport, and I walk from room to room, not sure what else to do with myself.
Nari had to write up her notes for her blog, so she dropped me outside the flat and headed straight across town to her own place.
She’d been so quiet on the flight home, reading and re-reading her notes on her phone and looking time and again at a neatly folded piece of pale blue paper she’d been clasping all the way from the resort.
Come to think of it, she’d been unusually, weirdly quiet. I’d gradually become aware of her scrolling through pictures on her camera during the flight – she’d be picking the best ones for her blog and Instagram, I imagine – but I saw her pause and look for a long time at an image of Niilo.
I was pretending to read one of the novels she’d given me the day before, but actually I’d been staring at the same paragraph ever since take-off and none of it had sunk in, so I sneaked a peek over at the photos and smiled to see Niilo.
He was sitting serene and cross-legged by a roaring fire inset into a wall papered in a retro seventies pattern. He looked as though he was toasting bread on a long fork held up to the flames. A cosy, homely scene.
‘You OK?’ I’d asked, and she’d simply smiled, secretively and sadly. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Talk about what?’
‘Niilo, of course. I thought, when he picked you up at the restaurant, when he sang you the song…’
‘There’s nothing to talk about, really. A holiday romance, that’s all. He made that quite clear this morning when he left to go on the trail. He told me he hoped I’d live a long and happy life and that I’d get to see every inch of the planet.’
‘He said that? No plans for meeting up, or…?’
‘No. just a goodbye. He was in a hurry this morning, anyway, the tourists were waiting, but… yes, just a goodbye.’
‘Are you happy with that? A holiday romance? You’re not upset about it?’
‘He was the perfect gentleman. I’ve got no complaints.’
‘Oh, OK,’ I said, dubiously. ‘And you guys were safe, right?’
I’m thrown an irritated eye-roll. ‘Obviously.’
In past conversations on the topic of nights spent with a cute guy, Nari would say this with a smirk and a fist bump, but this definitely isn’t the time for celebrating getting lucky. She’s solemnly looking at her photos again and hasn’t even asked if Stellan and me used condoms, which we did, thank you very much. I shake my head at the irony of the situation. The first time in eons I have something sensational of my own to share and we’re both in a daze so deep we can’t even enjoy the novelty of it.
‘So, what about Stephen?’ I’d asked, still hoping to get Nari to open up. ‘Are you seeing him in a few days?’
She interrupted my question with a brusque, ‘No’, and her thumbs started scrolling again.
I took a surreptitious peek over at the other shots she took, all beautifully filtered and cropped to perfection: Niilo and Stellan laughing together at the lavvu, and umpteen pictures of me and Nari, our faces squashed together as we grin up at the camera held aloft for silly selfies with the huskies in the background, or at the hotel restaurant, or outside our cabins in the snow.
Looking at those pictures six miles up in the sky above Scandinavia this morning, I already felt as though the whole escapade had taken on the unreality of a dream I couldn’t faithfully recall.
As we’d checked in our luggage and watched for our departure gate on the boards, I’d felt strangely altered. Even when the elves appeared to say goodbye, handing out colourful certificates decorated with images of a smiling Santa to celebrate the fact that we had crossed the Arctic Circle, I felt my previous cynicism had dissolved, and the elf lady with the basket of sweets looked shocked then delighted as I’d offered her a hug, overcome with a strange feeling of loss and regret. She’d handed me a tissue when I started to cry on her shoulder.
She’ll forever think of me as the mad, tragic single lady who arrived in Lapland crying and left crying too, but I’d just shrugged at myself and let the tears fall, thinking that this must be who I am now, somehow changed, somehow sentimental. I’d accepted her kindness with a smile just as the gate was unlocked and I’d walked out to the plane across the treacherously frozen tarmac.
Stellan had said he’
d text when he returned to the resort after the wilderness trail with the tourists. No signal all week, he’d explained. But I have the feeling our connection is already entirely lost.
What would our virtual friendship look like? A text here, a Facebook reminiscence there? (Though I notice, he still hasn’t ‘friended’ me.) Either way we’re a thousand miles apart with no signal.
It’s definitely time for a Boxing Day glass of gin, I think. If my life had a musical score this particular bit of my soundtrack, with me wandering around my flat unsure what to do with myself, would be accompanied by a morbid Morrissey wryly lamenting my choices, telling me I just haven’t suffered enough to have earned my happy ending yet. I hear him whining, and he accompanies me whatever I do as my first night back in my flat slowly drags by.
I find myself flicking through the pages of the song book that the kind priest gave me at the concert rehearsal, but the Finnish words look even more indecipherable here than they did that night in the cosy, Christmassy church, so I file it away on my bookshelf with Mum’s lucky silver sixpence marking the page of ‘Sylvia’s Christmas Song’; the carol that must mean so much to Stellan and his Finnish friends, but is, it turns out, incomprehensible to me.
I even downloaded the aurora-watching app that Stellan had mentioned at the sauna and I discover that a cloudless aurora sky is forecast for tonight. He’ll be beneath it, out on the trail in the wilderness, but here in England the heavens will simply be black.
Eventually, I settle on the sofa with a pot of tea and the big box of spiced Finnish biscuits I bought for myself in the airport’s little departure lounge. I pull my mermaid blanket over my legs and try to focus on the EastEnders Christmas episodes, crumbs falling over me.
And this is how I spend the following days, alone in my flat, staring at the screen, living off crumbs.
Chapter Thirty
‘Come in, Sylvie dear!’
Dad’s delightedly showing off an ‘I heart New York’ T-shirt with matching baseball cap, as soon as he opens the door. It looks incongruous with his Christmas robin print cardigan, beige slacks and slippers, and makes me smile instantly.
It’s the thirtieth of December. Their flight only got in last night, but they’re already in full ‘catch-up with Christmas’ mode.
‘Welcome home,’ I say, as I’m ushered inside and am met with a big hug from Mum in a jazzy mohair candy cane jumper.
‘I could say the same to you,’ Mum says. ‘Come on through. Nari not with you today?’
‘No, she’s been laying low since we got back. She texted to tell me she’s been catching up on some sleep and doing a lot of writing.’
‘What a shame, her present’s under the tree, and I’ve steamed a whopper of a Christmas pudding. Your dad’s whipped up some brandy butter and it feels like a proper Christmas with all this white stuff.’ Mum looks excitedly out the kitchen window.
It’s been snowing big fluffy flakes for an hour or so and I resist the urge to say that this is nothing compared to where I’ve been. Instead, I help Mum peel the carrots and baste the little supermarket ‘cook from frozen’ turkey that’s already turning golden in the oven and we all pretend this counterfeit Christmas is as much fun as the real, missed day would have been.
‘One of Nari’s posts is scheduled to go live on her blog at three. We can have a look at it together if you like. She took some great pictures,’ I say.
‘Did she enjoy Lapland?’
‘I think she fell in love with it.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes,’ I say, and it comes out sounding grim and ominous.
Our belated Christmas dinner, just the three of us, is just how I knew it would be: too much food, all delicious and hearty; Dad wearing his cracker hat even on the obligatory duck pond walk and as we dried the dishes together; and lots of chatter and pleasantness. We exchange presents and Dad says his musical socks are the best he’s ever been given, and Mum appreciates the new celebrity cookbook I give her.
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 the TV 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. ‘Your Stellan?’
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 o
ut 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 of Lonely Planet guides 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?’