Hygge and Kisses

by Clara Christensen

  ‘Not long,’ Bo replied quietly, stacking dirty plates in the dishwasher. ‘I’ve only been thinking seriously about it since I got back from Denmark.’

  Lauren seemed intrigued. She lowered the first batch of greasy roasting tins into the bubbles and set to work with the scouring pad. ‘Where would you work?’ she asked. She sounded curious rather than sceptical.

  Bo slammed the dishwasher shut and picked up a clean tea towel. ‘There are loads of street food markets all over London now. It’s still early days, though. I’d need to do my research.’

  Lauren rinsed the roasting tin under the hot water and handed it to Bo.

  ‘Sounds like a lot of work,’ Lauren observed.

  Bo shrugged. ‘I reckon I can handle it. I know it’s a gamble, but I’ve realised I don’t want to work in an office anymore.’

  They stood side by side at the sink, Lauren scouring and Bo drying, in contemplative silence. The sound of a sentimental Disney ballad drifted down the hallway from the living-room television, above the background drone of Clive snoring.

  Lauren’s open-mindedness had fostered a feeling of closeness, and Bo felt her guard dropping.

  ‘I envy you, you know,’ Bo said eventually. ‘It must be so nice, not having the pressure of deciding what you want to do with your life. Not having to worry about explaining a gap on your CV, or whether you’ll be able to afford next month’s rent.’

  ‘My life’s not all milk and cookies, you know,’ Lauren said, her voice tight. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Nick and I have a lovely lifestyle, but being a mum to twins isn’t exactly easy.’ Lauren was staring into the sink but Bo sensed that her sister was close to tears.

  ‘Oh, I know that, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘I haven’t had more than five hours’ sleep a night for nearly three years,’ Lauren cut in. Her hands, Bo noticed, were trembling. ‘And that’s not just Monday to Friday. It’s every day. I can’t even go to the toilet without one or other of the twins banging on the door to get in,’ – she had turned to face Bo, and a flush was rising in her cheeks – ‘let alone go off on holiday on my own, on the spur of the moment.’

  The allusion to her Danish trip stung, and Bo’s first instinct was to point out that she only went away because she had lost her job, and to remind Lauren that she and Nick were about to head to the Alps for a week’s skiing. But, instead, she said gently, ‘I hadn’t realised. You make it look so easy.’ Lauren’s shoulders sagged and her head dropped.

  ‘Sometimes there’s nothing I would like more than to go off to an office job every morning,’ Lauren explained. ‘To sit at a desk for eight hours a day, with other grown-ups to talk to, and not have to listen to Peppa Pig on a loop – and to get paid for the privilege! That sounds like heaven to me.’ Lauren gave a mirthless laugh.

  Bo dried a roasting tray in shamefaced silence. ‘I’m really sorry, Lauren. I guess I never really thought about it like that.’ She gave Lauren’s arm a rub, Lauren returned a watery smile and they stood in sisterly silence for a few moments.

  ‘I think you should give it a go,’ Lauren said finally.

  ‘Give what a go?’ answered Bo, confused, thinking for a split second that Lauren was talking about motherhood.

  ‘The street food idea,’ Lauren replied.

  ‘Really?’ Bo looked at her sister in astonishment.

  ‘If you don’t do it now, you might not get the chance again,’ Lauren urged. ‘Don’t wait till you’re tied down with kids.’

  From nowhere, Bo felt a sob rising in her chest, but the tears which suddenly brimmed in her eyes were tears of gratitude, rather than of sadness.

  Bo went to bed that night buoyed up by her conversation with Lauren. Articulating her ambition out loud had helped to clarify her thoughts and her street food idea was beginning to feel like a real possibility rather than just a fantasy. For the first time, she had a clear sense of what she wanted her business to be. Inspired by her experience in Denmark, her ethos would be rooted in the values of cosiness, simplicity, and making time for simple pleasures; her mission – to offer a taste of hygge in the midst of the frenetic life of the capital. The thought made her smile. Emil would appreciate the sentiment, she was certain.

  She closed her eyes and had a sudden vision of herself and Emil on the sandbar at Grenen, holding hands as his mother’s ashes floated into the ether above the crashing waves. With an intense stab of guilt, she realised how self-absorbed she had been since her return from Denmark. She had been so preoccupied with her own problems that she had overlooked the stark reality of Emil’s situation. This was his first Christmas without his mother and, regardless of whether anything would come of what had happened between them, she wanted to let him know she was thinking of him.

  She picked up her phone, found his contact details and typed: Happy Christmas Emil. I know today must have been hard for you. Bo x

  Chapter 22

  Lauren and her family set off on Boxing Day for Nick’s parents’ house in Surrey. Their departure was a whirlwind of fractious toddlers, misplaced car keys, and snippy exchanges between Nick and Lauren.

  Once the car boot was finally packed, Bo helped to round up the twins.

  ‘Ready for round two?’ she joked, leaning into the back of the Volvo to strap Amelie into her car seat. Lauren returned a conspiratorial smile across the back seat.

  ‘More turkey. More tantrums. Can’t wait,’ she replied drily, clicking Freddy’s seatbelt into place.

  They all exchanged farewell hugs and kisses on the drive.

  ‘Have the twins got enough snacks for the journey?’ Barbara asked anxiously, peering through the window at Freddy, who was demolishing a mince pie messily in his car seat.

  ‘They’ll be fine, Mum,’ Lauren reassured her, with a tiny sideways smile at Bo.

  ‘Right then, let’s go,’ Nick said, a little tetchily, and pulled his car keys from his jeans pocket.

  ‘Maybe I could come down to Berkshire in the new year?’ Bo said, as Lauren opened the passenger door and climbed into the plush leather seat. ‘It would be nice for us to spend some time together.’

  Lauren held her gaze and smiled. ‘I’d love that.’

  Bo spent the remainder of her stay in Buckinghamshire researching the street food scene on her parents’ iPad, finding out as much as she could about the practicalities of running a mobile catering business. Barbara poked her head around the bedroom door intermittently, offering cups of tea and fretting that Bo might be ill.

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, don’t worry. I’ve just got stuff to do, that’s all,’ Bo said, as Barbara placed the back of her hand against her forehead to check for a fever. She noticed her mother’s eyes flicker to the screen on her lap, which was open on a page about a street food market in King’s Cross, but nothing was said about it at dinner that evening. Although she was grateful for their discretion, she suspected that her parents hoped that, if left alone, her street food idea would fizzle out of its own accord.

  Emil had replied to her text on Christmas night, apologising that he had not been in touch sooner and explaining that he had worked in the restaurant up till Christmas eve, before flying to Aarhus to spend a few days with his father. They continued to message each other over the days that followed, sending politely chaste messages, as if neither of them was quite sure how intimate they were allowed to be. Bo desperately wanted to tell him she had split up with Ben, but could not think of a way of mentioning it which would not sound crass and opportunistic.

  Instead of addressing how they felt about each other, they talked about work. She told Emil about her street food idea, although she held back on revealing her plan for a hygge-themed menu, worried that he would find it phony (she might have a Danish-sounding name, after all, but that didn’t give her the right to sell Danish food). Emil was full of enthusiasm and encouragement and, in turn, revealed that he had been asked by his employers to help set up a new restaurant in Copenhagen. It would offer a simpler, more pared-down menu, whilst sti
ll adhering to the Nordic Cuisine ethos of using native, seasonal ingredients in inventive ways. He added, almost as an afterthought, that he had been offered the role of head chef.

  That’s amazing news! Congratulations! she wrote. She wanted to add, I’m so proud of you, but lost her nerve, fearing it might sound presumptuous.

  With December drawing to a close, the topic of their respective plans for New Year’s Eve arose. Bo was relieved to hear that Emil would be spending the evening with his brother and sister-in-law at his flat in Copenhagen, rather than at a party. She wasn’t sure what a Danish New Year’s Eve party would consist of, but she suspected copious amounts of schnapps would be involved and that there would be a lot of pretty, long-legged blondes, and the very thought of it made her irrationally jealous. When Emil asked after her plans, she told him she would be going to a party with friends, some girls I went to school with, she clarified, hoping he would read between the lines and understand that she was not going to be seeing in the New Year with Ben.

  The question of whether they would make arrangements to see each other again hung over them, unspoken. January was going to be a busy time for them both and, whether it was because neither of them had the confidence to ask, or because they both sensed the timing was not right, neither of them broached the subject.

  *

  In the event, New Year’s Eve was a dispiriting evening of cheap wine, supermarket party food and forced jollity with people Bo quickly realised she no longer had anything in common with. Rattling back to Holloway on the tube in the early hours of the new year, doing her best to ignore the carousing of other revellers in the carriage, it occurred to Bo that she would rather have spent the evening sharing a meal with friends than in the poky kitchen of a flat in Walthamstow, sipping wine from a plastic cup and shouting to be heard over a thudding drum beat.

  It was a relief when the festive period was over and Bo could, at last, devote her time to thinking about her street food plan. She spent hours hunched over the laptop at the dining table, scribbling notes in a pad. She had found an online guide to setting up a mobile catering business, which covered everything from street trading laws to start-up costs and advice on branding. But her research, though fuelling her conviction that street food would be the best way for her to try her hand at a career in catering, also made her realise how many challenges lay ahead.

  First and foremost, she would need a vehicle to trade from. A scan of the selling sites swiftly put an end to her dream of buying a cute vintage van of the type she had seen at Euston Station. Retro-charm, she discovered, came at a premium. She balked at the idea of buying a no-frills catering van, having read that the food markets and festivals allocated pitches – in part – based on the appearance of the vendors’ vehicles. Besides, it was important to Bo that her mobile cafe be consistent with the Danish aesthetic of elegance and style. Serving her cakes and coffee from a white-box-on-wheels van did not fit with her brand image at all.

  She searched the sites again with scaled-back expectations, scrolling past the adapted airstreams and gypsy caravans and ignoring the functionally ugly burger vans, searching for something that would combine vintage charm with a modest price tag. Eventually, an image of a converted horse-box slid onto her screen. It had a wooden serving hatch in its corrugated iron side and, although tiny, it had a quirkily vintage look. She clicked on the listing to check its specifications. Although compact, it had everything she would need in terms of water, electricity and storage. Most importantly, it was within her budget. Bo closed her eyes and indulged in a daydream, imagining herself in a pink apron, serving brownies through the horse-box’s hatch at a trendy London food market. The daydream came to an abrupt end, however, when it occurred to Bo that, if she went ahead and bought a horse-box, she would also need to buy a car with which to tow it.

  Sipping coffee on the sagging sofa of a Berkshire soft-play barn a few days later, Bo explained her quandary to Lauren. ‘A horse-box is no use to me without a car, but if I buy the horse-box I won’t be able to afford a car as well,’ she said morosely. Around them, the walls echoed with children’s screams, and the Frozen soundtrack blared from wall-mounted speakers.

  ‘I could speak to Nick if you like,’ Lauren volunteered. ‘Maybe we could lend you the money to buy a car?’

  Bo puffed out her cheeks and stared absently at Amelie and Freddy, who were pelting each other with coloured plastic balls in a giant pit. Although she couldn’t admit it to Lauren, she didn’t like the idea of being indebted to her brother-in-law. She wanted the street-food business to be hers alone and she suspected that Nick would assume some kind of quasi-proprietorial interest in the business if he had helped to fund it.

  ‘Thanks, Lauren, that’s really kind, but I couldn’t ask you to do that,’ she said. ‘I’ll find some way around it, I’m sure. Something will come up,’ she concluded brightly, trying to sound more optimistic than she felt.

  In the second week of January, Bo was halfway through an online food hygiene course when she received a text message from Florence.

  Hey babe, long time no see! How’ve you been? Fancy a trip to the seaside? Come down to Hove for a day! LOADS to tell you x

  Bo smiled at her phone screen. She had a sudden flashback of Florence sitting opposite her at the marina cafe in Skagen, chatting good-naturedly, and had a pang of longing to see her again.

  Would LOVE to come down and see you. I’ve got lots to tell you too.

  I’ll show you a proper British day at the seaside, give Skagen a run for its money – Florence promised.

  A flurry of texts followed, in which they agreed that Bo would come down to Hove that coming weekend.

  Saturday arrived, chill and blustery. Bo spent the train journey to the south coast thinking about the horse-box she had seen on the selling site, and toying with menu ideas, until the train’s rocking motion lulled her to sleep. Florence met her on the platform at Brighton station, waving excitedly from behind the ticket barriers in her knitted bobble hat. The sight of her impish grin made Bo instinctively break out into a smile.

  They drove along the seafront to Hove in Florence’s clapped-out Fiat Punto. It was the first time Bo had seen the sea since Denmark, and although the built-up British resort lacked the bleak desolation of the Danish coastline, the sight of the brooding, steel-grey sea nevertheless gave her a thrill of child-like excitement.

  Florence deftly manoeuvred the Fiat into a space on a street lined with white-painted Victorian terraced houses. Seagulls screeched overhead as Bo followed Florence inside and up a cramped stairwell to the first floor. There, Florence twisted her key in the lock and gave the front door a firm shove with her shoulder.

  ‘Chez moi,’ she said mock-grandly. Inside, a cluttered hallway opened into a living room which, even on a grey day in January, felt bright and cheerful. Two handsome, sash windows gave an airy feel to the room, which was at the same time quirkily shabby and effortlessly chic. The walls were painted in a bold cobalt blue and a fifties-style orange sofa faced the fireplace across a coffee table made from a recycled wooden pallet attached to industrial castors. Paperbacks and old sketchpads jostled for space on the alcove shelves and a battered 1930s leather club chair squatted against the wall between the windows.

  ‘This place is great,’ Bo murmured admiringly, taking a few steps further inside and placing her bag on the small wooden dining table tucked against the wall on her left.

  ‘Hello, Bo,’ a voice said, from behind.

  Bo turned to see a smiling, bearded man rising from an antique wing chair which she had not noticed, having been concealed from her view by the open door.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, momentarily pole-axed.

  ‘Simon . . . I didn’t realise . . . Florence hadn’t . . .’

  Bo fired a questioning look at Florence, who was smirking like a mischievous child.

  ‘She wanted to surprise you. So, surprise!’ Simon replied drolly, waving both hands theatrically like a chorus-girl. He stepped to
wards her and they exchanged a kiss.

  ‘The beard threw me. I almost didn’t recognise you.’ Bo laughed, glancing at his hirsute jawline.

  ‘Florence’s idea,’ he replied with a faintly pained look. ‘She thinks it makes me look cuddly.’

  ‘Well, cuddly is an improvement on sulky,’ Florence teased, with a playful wink at Bo.

  Bo stood in astounded silence for a few seconds then, as her brain began to process what she was seeing, said, ‘I had no idea you two . . . I mean, how long . . . when . . .’

  ‘Since we got back from Denmark,’ Florence replied, taking pity on Bo’s befuddled state. ‘I was in London and called Simon to see if he wanted to meet for a drink and . . . well . . . here we are.’ She gave a happy-go-lucky shrug then said, ‘I told you we had lots to catch up on, didn’t I, babe?’

  ‘You did,’ Bo agreed.

  Bo sat down beside Simon on the orange sofa while Florence made tea in the kitchen.

  ‘Still working on the novel?’ Bo asked brightly, noticing the open laptop on a little table next to the wing chair.

  Simon’s brow clouded. ‘Second draft,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

  Florence reappeared with a tray of steaming earthenware mugs.

  ‘He says he wants to see me,’ she said, placing the tray on the coffee table and lowering herself into the club chair, ‘but I think really he just comes here to write.’

  Simon looked shamefaced. ‘Two birds with one stone, and all that,’ he mumbled apologetically. ‘Besides, it shouldn’t be too much longer now.’

  Florence rolled her eyes in an exaggerated heard it all before gesture, but Bo sensed affection behind the exchange, and found the thought of Simon and Florence still bickering about his novel obscurely comforting.

  ‘Has he let you read any of it yet?’ she asked, playing along. Florence snorted.

  ‘Course not.’

  Bo had brought home-made Daim chocolate muffins, in homage to their stay in the summerhouse, and the three of them sipped tea and ate muffins, chatting about their plans for the year ahead. Florence was preparing for an exhibition, working on a series of pieces inspired by coastal flora. She jumped up from her seat to fetch a porcelain tile delicately embossed with a seed head of dune grass.