‘Tomorrow? How did you know I’d …’ I trail off. His voice sounds so animated now that I’m forgetting this is a man who’s just had a heart attack. He’s lucky to be alive. He might not have long left, and I haven’t seen him for over three years. I’m not going to turn down what might be my last chance to see him, no matter where he is in the world.
‘It’ll be fun, Sasha. It’s been too long since we saw each other. And finally a chance to spend Christmas together!’ He sounds remarkably less close to death’s door than he did a few minutes ago. He sounds normal now, like he’s not even on death’s garden path.
‘Christmas? That’s four weeks away. You need me for that long?’
‘Well, it’s a busy season. Reindeer and Christmas, they go hand in hand. And we’re not keeping on top of things …’
‘Who’s this “we”? I thought you were on your own?’
‘Me and the reindeer, obviously. They can’t wait to meet you. I’ve told them all about you and your fancy job. They were very impressed.’
‘The reindeer?’ I ask, wondering if the incredulity is coming across in my voice. Should I feel guilty that there’s now a bunch of reindeer somewhere in Norway who also think I’m the manager of a posh hotel?
Dad starts telling me about what wonderful animals they are, but this conversation has spiralled out of my control – a common feeling when talking to my father. It’s like he’s pre-decided how this phone call would go. ‘Where exactly is this place?’
‘We’re in the northernmost part of Norway. It’s lovely here. You’ll love it. Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle and—’
‘Two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle?’ I shiver involuntarily. ‘Surely that’s not … habitable?’
‘Oh, yes, it’s charming. You can survive quite happily up here.’
‘Survive …’ I repeat. ‘Why is everything you do about survival and not just being happy where you are and having a quiet life?’
He doesn’t answer and I feel the need to claw this conversation back around, to do something that wasn’t already determined before he picked up the phone. ‘Dad, I have a condition. If I’m coming out there, it’s to help you sell the place. You might not have realised it, but you’re an elderly man and you’ve had a heart attack. This cannot continue. You can’t keep living like this. And you can’t stay somewhere that’s two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle completely alone – that’s not safe. You have to come back to a quiet life here in the UK with a doctor’s surgery ten minutes up the road. You’ve been lucky to survive this, but you have to take it as a sign. It’s time to give up the mad life and be normal.’
‘And do what? Jigsaw puzzles while drooling into my slippers?’
‘Yes! Exactly that! There are plenty of classes you can join to keep active, but you cannot stay out there by yourself running a flipping reindeer farm.’
‘Sanctuary, not farm. We help injured and abandoned reindeer.’
He’s deliberately ignoring me. ‘I’m serious, Dad.’ I squeeze the phone a bit tighter, even though the harsh breathing and coughing ceased since the moment I agreed to go. ‘We’ll get it market-ready, get a valuation and a survey and whatever else we need, and then get an estate agent to put it up for sale, and you come home with me in January. Enough is enough now. You’ve been living the wild life for too long. Your body is telling you to slow down. I’m not coming unless it’s to help you sell the place and come home for good.’ I give a sharp nod to the wall. He can’t see it, but it makes me sound more confident than I feel.
He doesn’t reply. Are all parents this frustrating or is it just my dad?
‘Look, we both know you’ll have moved on and bought a beach hut in Hawaii by Easter. You never stay in one place for more than a month or two, but this has to end now.’ I sigh and try a different tactic. ‘If you expect me to be able to shirk off work and leave all my colleagues in the lurch at my fancy, important job, then it has to be for a good reason.’
‘Well, you never know, when you see it, you might fall in love with the place like I did.’
I do a deliberately sarcastic laugh. ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
Neither of us speaks for a long while. Dad usually fills any silence with tales of people he’s met in random corners of the earth, and I usually recount the plots of TV dramas like they’re events that happened to friends of mine in an attempt to make my life sound more interesting. My dad is a global traveller who’s seen every inch of the world twice over. I don’t even take the scenic route home from work. The most exciting place I’ve visited in recent months is the dentist. But I don’t try to fill the silence this time. He has to realise that you can’t have a heart attack and carry on as you were. Something has got to change.
‘All right,’ he says eventually. ‘Maybe you’ve got a point.’
He sounds grudging and unconvinced, and I feel a little bit guilty for trying to make him do something he doesn’t want to, but someone has got to be the sensible adult between us, and it’s definitely not going to be him. ‘So you agree? I come out there and help you, and then we put it in the hands of an estate agent and you come home with me in January.’
He doesn’t confirm his agreement. ‘It’ll be fantastic to see you. I’ve booked you on flights for tomorrow, and I’ve arranged a taxi to collect you in the morning and take you to the airport. You’re on a flight into Oslo, and then you get a connecting flight to our nearest airport, and I’ll meet you there. I’ve emailed all the info over.’
It’s so far off the beaten track that I can’t even get a direct flight there. Brilliant. I try to ignore the wave of anxiety that washes over me at the thought of flights and travel and packing. I can’t explain that to someone who flies more regularly than the local sparrow population.
‘Pack warm!’ he says cheerily. ‘But don’t worry too much – we have plenty of extra clothes here for anyone who arrives unprepared.’
‘How many people arrive at a reindeer sanctuary, prepared or unprepared?’ My face screws up in confusion. ‘Is it somewhere people visit? Like a dog shelter or something?’
‘Something like that. I must dash! See you tomorrow! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!’
I’m pretty sure I hear the chortling of a “ho ho ho” as he hangs up, and I sink back against the cushions and stare at the blank screen of the phone in my hand. Typical Dad. I have no idea how worried I should be. My immortal, effervescent, full-of-life dad has had a heart attack, and yet as soon as I agreed to go, he sounded like his old self again.
Maybe I’m being too hard on him. Maybe he just genuinely needs help and was relieved that I’d agreed. I’m sure once he’s had a chance to think about it, he’ll realise that selling up and coming back to England is for the best.
And it would be nice to be needed. My dad has never needed anything from me. No one ever really needs anything from me. Even the birds I feed every morning are indifferent to my existence.
And I do love working with animals. Helping sickly reindeer doesn’t sound like the worst way to spend a December. I’ve never even seen a reindeer in real life before.
And the idea that it could be my last chance to see my dad wheedles its way in again. The sort of thought that no one likes to think, but if you’ve got elderly parents, you can’t avoid it crossing your mind occasionally. It’s scary enough to make me push myself upright and climb the stairs to find a suitcase I’ve only got because my dad sent it as a Christmas present last year, pack my warmest clothes, and dig out the passport I’ve never used and only have because Dad paid for it and insisted I’d need it one day.
‘Okay, enough wallowing,’ I say to the empty room. ‘I’m going to Norway.’
And that’s a sentence I never thought I’d say.
Chapter 2
Dear Santa,
What would you wish for? I bet no one ever asks you that.
From,
Olivia
After a lon
g, long, long day of travelling, I’m exhausted by the time I get off a rickety plane at a tiny airport inside the Arctic Circle.
There is snow everywhere, and although I’ve not seen a lot of runways in real life before, I’m pretty sure none of them are meant to be this small.
It’s only 7 p.m. but it’s pitch-dark and freezing. Even though I’ve got a big coat on, the cold bites at my arms and hits my chest like a sheet of ice. My feet plunge into ankle-deep snow, and the two pairs of socks I’ve got on inside my trainers do nothing to keep it out. The air is so cold it’s like breathing razor blades and it feels like shards of ice are hitting the back of my throat every time I inhale.
But it doesn’t take away how grateful I am to be back on solid ground. I’m kind of impressed with myself for … I don’t know … getting here, I guess. I’ve never done anything more complicated than take a train before, and somehow I’ve made it to Norway and this is the third airport I’ll have had to negotiate today. I didn’t even have a panic attack mid-journey, which really is impressive considering the plane felt like it was going to fall apart in mid-air.
The wing gives an ominous creak as the pilot directs me and the two other passengers into a derelict-looking airport building that not only looks like it’s about to fall apart at any moment, but also looks like it has fallen apart several times and been patched up with stray bits of wood haphazardly nailed on. My suitcase wheels give up at the sight of snow, and we clomp towards the ramshackle building down a snow-covered path. It looks like someone cleared it this morning, but more snow has fallen since and they’ve given up trying to keep up with it.
I’m shivering as I go through security, which is a woman behind a desk who peers at our passports and nods us through, and inside the building is an information desk, a vending machine, and a row of seats. I walk into the reception area looking around for my dad. I’ve spent the whole journey thinking about how good it will be to see him, and I can’t help thinking he’ll be a little bit proud of me for being brave and actually making it here, and that’s without knowing how many times I nearly told the taxi driver to turn around and take me home on the way to the airport this morning. I don’t know how people do this on a regular basis. Travel is daunting.
The feeling of being brave lasts until my eyes fall on a man standing in the reception area, facing the gate we’re entering through, and holding up a sign reading ‘Sasha Hansley’.
My heart is instantly pounding and I can’t hear anything above the sound of blood rushing in my head. My suitcase clatters into the row of chairs and makes such a noise that it shakes the whole building as I rush across to him. My dad said he’d meet me at the airport. What if something’s happened? What if I haven’t made it in time?
The run across the tiny room leaves me breathless and I’m not sure if it’s the exertion or the panic. I point at the man’s sign. ‘Is he okay? Where is he?’
He turns the cardboard sign over in his hand, looks at it, looks at me, and holds it out questioningly.
‘I’m Sasha,’ I say hurriedly. ‘He was supposed to meet me. Has something happened?’
‘He’s fine. He delegated,’ the man says. His voice is deep and has a slight accent.
I put a gloved hand on my chest and will my heart to slow down. Despite the freezing temperatures, warm relief floods me. ‘I thought I was going to be too late.’
The man doesn’t say anything, but I can feel his eyes on me.
‘Are you a friend? Neighbour? Boyfriend?’ I’m not sure the last one is likely, but with my dad, nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.
He raises a dark eyebrow. ‘Employee.’
‘You work for him?’ I don’t hide the double take. ‘I thought he was on his own out here.’
‘We are on our own out here.’
‘Oh.’ I take a step back and realise I have to strain my neck to look up at his truly colossal height. ‘He left that key nugget of information out when I spoke to him yesterday.’
He once again doesn’t respond, and I stand there staring at him in surprised silence. He is an absolute mountain of a man, taller and wider than some actual mountains. He must be six-foot-six at least, if not taller. He’s wearing a red and white Fair Isle knitted hat with clear ski goggles pushed up onto it, and enough layers of padded clothes that he looks like a sexier version of the Michelin Man. Why didn’t Dad mention him? Did he think I wouldn’t have come if I’d known he’s got an employee who looks like he could bench-press the entire building and the plane we came in?
‘Taavi.’ He gives me a nod that’s probably meant to be a greeting.
‘Is that a name or a location?’ I say as a joke.
He’s got a knitted scarf pulled up far enough to cover the lower half of his face, but he doesn’t laugh, smile, or react in any way. Instead, he turns around and deposits the cardboard sign into a nearby bin.
Maybe he doesn’t speak much English and he’s out of his depth trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t speak a word of Norwegian. So far we seem limited to single-word answers and the odd stilted sentence.
Instead of asking if I’m ready to go, he leans across and removes my suitcase from my hand. I go to protest that I can carry my own suitcase, but his huge hand, made even huger by the padded gloves he’s wearing, simply closes around the handle and lifts it away from me like I’m completely inconsequential, leaving me grasping at thin air as he lifts it up and across the row of seats as if it weighs nothing. I’ve been hauling the thing around all day with both hands and a few choice swearwords in its direction.
When he reaches the door, he opens it and steps back to let me go through first, and I nod a thank you to him, hopefully translatable in all languages.
Outside, it’s dark, and the air is sharp and cold, momentarily shocking me again as I inhale and look around. There are modern square-angled LED streetlamps shining down on snow that looks even deeper out here than it did from the runway, and the airport is in a small clearing in what seems to be the middle of a forest. Across the road, tall snow-capped evergreens rise up on spindly trunks.
There’s a small car park with only four cars in it to my left, and to the right, there’s a row of husky dogs tethered to a sled, all barking and howling, eager to get going.
‘Oh wow.’ I look at them in surprise. ‘How charmingly Arctic. People don’t really get picked up from the airport by dog sled, do they?’
Taavi doesn’t respond so I start walking towards the cars, and it takes a few steps to realise he’s not following.
When I turn around, he’s loading my suitcase into the dog sled. ‘Oh, come on. Those are your dogs?’
‘No, they are not my dogs.’
‘What are you doing with them then?’
‘They’re not my dogs, but they are my mode of transportation.’
‘Are you serious? That’s how we’re getting to the reindeer sanctuary?’
‘Unless you would prefer to walk, in which case, it’s only two hours in that direction.’ He gestures towards the trees. ‘I’ll send the coroner back to find your body in the morning. If there’s anything left to find, that is. You’ll probably have been completely devoured by starving wild animals by then.’
My eyes go wide. ‘Are you serious?’ I repeat, going for a world record on how many times you can ask someone if they’re serious in a sixty-second period.
He doesn’t speak or smile or do anything to suggest he isn’t serious. Walking in this weather didn’t sound appealing anyway, but even less so when you bring wild animals into the equation.
‘Who travels by dog sled though?’ I say apprehensively. ‘Is it safe?’
He pulls his goggles down from his hat and fits them over his eyes with a pop. ‘You’ll find out.’
I look between him and the dogs. Getting pulled along in a sleigh that looks like it’s made from strips of wood and held together with garden twine, by nine huge, excitable dogs was not on my to-do list ever. I know people come to this part
of the world for experiences like this, but … not me. The most exhilarating experience I’ve ever wanted is the feeling when Netflix adds a new boxset and you’ve got a whole weekend free. And for not the first time today, I wonder what I was thinking of in agreeing to come here. This is not a place for someone like me.
Taavi is standing beside the sleigh and gesturing for me to get in. I can’t see much of his face between the scarf and goggles, but I know there’s an impatient look on it. I glance back at the airport. I suppose it’s too late to turn back now.
The dogs start wagging their tails and barking louder as I step closer. I like dogs; I’m not out of my depth with them. I let the nearest one sniff my hand, but they’re so eager to start running that the grey and white husky isn’t interested in me and quickly goes back to yowling with the others.
Taavi holds an open hand towards the sleigh again, and when I hesitate, he leans across it and holds his arm out, offering me something to hold on to as I step over the side. Taking hold of his arm is like holding on to a tree trunk, solid and strong, and padded by however many layers he’s got on under the thick coat. I lower myself down onto the red canvas lining so I’m sitting back. There’s a pile of blankets next to me and I pull one over and spread it out across my body gratefully. I thought I was well wrapped up until I got here, but this cold is so bitter that it’s no match for any of my clothes. As he steps onto the back of the sled, I look behind us to the road that leads out from the car park in the opposite direction. It doesn’t seem like we’re going to be able to turn around in this space.
He shouts something to the dogs to ready them, and then they take off, pulling us towards the forest.
‘Where are we going? There’s a road right there …’ I shout up at him, struggling to be heard over the excited woofing.
‘I don’t do roads.’
Brilliant. Heading into the woods with a gigantic stranger of a man and nine dogs. I’m pretty sure horror movies have started with more promising opening scenes than this.
The Post Box at the North Pole: The perfect cosy and uplifting Christmas romance to curl up with in 2021! Page 2
