by Sophie Love
After touring the gardens she went inside to look at the artwork and all the different sculptures. She noticed a young couple looking entranced by it all. For the first time since starting her trip, she felt the urge to speak to someone new. She went up to them, taking her notebook from her purse as she went.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” she said to the woman, a tall, natural blond with icy blue eyes.
The girl smiled genially. “Can I help?”
“I’m a travel writer,” Keira explained, holding up her notebook as some kind of proof to her claim. “I was wondering if I could speak to you about Copenhagen.”
“Oh,” the boy said this time. “We’re not local, though.”
“That’s okay,” Keira replied. “I’m just interested in your experiences of the city. How has it been for you so far?”
The young couple looked at each other, flashing glances that communicated their deep love and affection.
“It’s been wonderful.” The girl smiled.
The boy nodded his agreement.
“What’s been your highlight?” Keira asked.
The couple shared another glance.
“For me, the walking bridge,” the girl said. “Where lovers write their names on padlocks.”
“Oh yes,” Keira replied, scribbling it down quickly. A lover’s bridge seemed to be another staple of European cities. “Anything a bit more Copenhagen specific?”
“The Little Mermaid statue,” the boy suggested.
Of course, Keira thought. The most famous Danish love story. She could use the tragedy of the Little Mermaid (the Hans Christian Andersen original version, not the cartoon one!) as a springboard for her article.
“Great, I’ll visit that,” she said, jotting it down so as not to forget.
The couple headed off, hand in hand, almost as if they’d already forgotten their brief interview with Keira, with eyes only for each other. Keira watched them go with a pang of longing in her chest.
She checked the time and realized that thanks to having cut off the museum tour early and scarfing her lunch down, she still had plenty of time for another attraction before returning to the ship for dinner. She took out her pamphlet, considering castles and museums, until she saw something that really caught her attention. The Fredericksberg Rundell ice rink. Getting a bit of physical exercise would certainly be a welcome change from feeling lonely in museums and cafes.
It took over half an hour to walk to the ice rink but Keira didn’t mind, since it gave her the opportunity to see more of the city. Besides, it was very pedestrian friendly, with hardly any cars and many pedestrianized areas, the old roads paved over and now home to awesome spruce trees. The city was really made for walking, Keira thought, as she took a deep, calming breath.
When she arrived at the Fredericksberg Rundell ice rink, it was amazing, not to mention huge. Keira hired skates and joined the throngs of people. Whizzing around was exhilarating. For the first time in a while, she felt like she was really doing something for herself. She realized then that she was having fun, even though she was on her own. Her desire for independence was finally starting to come true.
*
Keira returned to the boat, taking up her spot on the sun lounger on the deck as she had the night before, only this time without the champagne. It was very peaceful out on deck, with the sound of the ocean sloshing against the sides of the boat and a million stars above her.
She got out her notebook and began to write a few snippets from her day, of her faux pas during the museum tour, and the couple she’d met in the winter gardens, and the exhilaration she’d felt during the solo ice skating. She read it back, pleased but instinctively knowing that Viatorum would hate it. It read far too much like a diary entry rather than that delicate balance between travel and romance she’d found in her previous work.
Just then, Keira’s phone started ringing. She jumped. It had felt like a long time since she’d properly spoken to anyone, and the moment she thought it she realized it was true. She hadn’t really had a full conversation all day.
She looked at the name flashing on the screen and was shocked to discover that it was Cristiano. She stared at her phone in her hand, deliberating over what to do. Today had been the first day she’d felt good on her own. She didn’t want to spoil that newfound freedom by hearing Cristiano’s voice. And besides, that stupid text message she’d sent still remained unspoken between them. She was far too embarrassed to even broach the subject with him.
By the time she’d decided not to answer the call, the phone had stopped ringing. She waited for a moment to see if he would leave a voicemail. But none came.
Keira felt a pang of loneliness. She realized then that this was exactly what her boss and editor would want to know about; the longing, the fighting against her own instincts to find someone new who could soothe the pain. Once again, she’d need to put her heart on the line and lay out all her vulnerabilities for the world to see. As the Romance Guru, her heartbreak was in demand.
She sighed, sadly, and began to write.
CHAPTER TEN
Keira had just one more day in Denmark, one day to conjure up some words to send to the magazine. She hadn’t yet found her groove with this article. Maybe some more interviews would help.
She dressed herself for the day, then went to the dining hall for breakfast. As she entered she saw that the ginger-haired server from before was on shift again. She groaned internally in anticipation of his flirty ways. Except, when he came up to show her to a spare table, he seemed morose. He greeted her with a simple “Good morning” and quietly led her to her table. No flirty quips whatsoever.
Keira sat, looking up at him curiously. He handed her a menu with an audible sigh.
“Is everything okay?” Keira asked.
“Yeah,” he said dismissively and wholly unconvincingly. “What are you having? Coffee again?”
Keira nodded. “And oatmeal. Thanks.”
He wandered away. She watched him go.
She took her notebook out, glancing back over the few scribbled passages she’d written of her first impressions of Copenhagen. There weren’t many, just the embarrassing experience at the museum and the brief interview with the loved up tourists in the winter gardens. At least she could call the Denmark leg of her journey a success in terms of not rebounding. She’d barely spoken to anyone, let alone had the chance to fall in love.
Just then, her server returned with her breakfast. He placed it on the table before her, eyeing the notebook in her hands.
“How’s it going?” he asked. “The article, I mean.”
His tone was so completely different from how it had been the last time they’d met that Keira couldn’t help but worry. He seemed thoroughly depressed.
“Not great,” she admitted. “I haven’t interviewed enough people.” Suddenly, Keira had an idea. “Hey, how about I interview you?” she asked.
The server raised both his ginger eyebrows. “Me?”
“Sure,” she replied, smiling kindly. He looked like he was in desperate need of human contact, or, at the very least, something to distract him from his unhappiness. “It’s not exactly busy this morning. Why don’t you take a seat?” She gestured to the chair opposite.
The server looked over his shoulder at the more or less empty dining room. He wasn’t the only person on shift. Finally, he shrugged and took a seat.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Well,” Keira began, picking up her coffee mug and taking a small sip. “My articles are always romance themed. I travel abroad and talk to locals about what love is like where they’re from.” She decided to omit the part about falling in love herself—she didn’t want to give him any ideas! “It’s been tricky this time as I’m only passing through Denmark for a few days. So far I’ve just been rubbing shoulders with tourists.”
“I can’t help you there,” he replied. “I’m not from Denmark.”
“No,” she agreed, having alrea
dy noted his British accent. “But you can give me an insight into what it’s like being on a cruise ship. Since the ship is going to be the one constant during my entire trip, it might make sense for me to frame the story around it.”
“This sounds very complicated for a travel article,” he quipped.
“Tell me about it,” Keira replied, wryly. “I’d much prefer to be a travel food writer. Have my own spin-off TV show. A blog. A book.” She looked wistfully away. Then she shook her head and turned back to the ginger-haired boy in front of her. “But one step at a time. Anyway, back to you.”
The boy’s eyes fell to the table top. “Me? Well, honestly, I don’t have any luck in love whatsoever. I’m on here for months at a time. There was a singer last summer, she was lovely. But there’s always a time limit. A month or two, then they’re off on another boat, in another part of the world.”
Keira swallowed the spoonful of oatmeal she’d been eating as he spoke. “Where is she now? The singer?”
“The Caribbean,” he said, sighing. “Having a mad love affair with the double bass player.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through some pictures, then held it out to Keira. “See?”
She looked at the image of a beautiful young girl in a sparkly red dress smiling broadly beside a handsome man in a suit.
“She’s pretty,” Keira commented. “How old is she?”
“Nineteen, like me,” he said, sighing again. “I shouldn’t follow her on social media, really. Every season she finds a new guy. Every season it breaks my heart all over again.”
“I’m sorry,” Keira said, empathetically. “That must be hard.”
She studied the photo again, and couldn’t help but think the singer’s story resonated so much with her own. While Keira had a different country and tour guide, this singer had a different cruise ship and crew. Except she looked a ton happier about it than Keira was!
Was age the difference? Keira wondered. That transitory, nomadic lifestyle lent itself more favorably to younger people, straight out of college, who wanted to have as many new experiences as possible, who had all the time in the world to find true love.
Or maybe it wasn’t age at all, but attitude. What if she’d been approaching the Romance Guru assignments all wrong? Before she’d landed this gig, she’d been doing the whole stable relationship routine with Zach, and ever since then she’d attempted to replicate that. With Shane. With Cristiano. But it was never going to work because the circumstances underpinning those relationships were entirely incompatible with, well, relationships. She’d been trying to find love, following society’s (and Mallory’s) demand that she should settle down now that she was fast approaching her thirties. But that was never going to work! She should be falling in lust. She should be collecting experiences just like the broadly smiling singer in the photograph. She’d never had the chance to do it in her early twenties because she’d been so focused on her career, and then Zach came along and it was safe and easy not to think about it.
The answer hit her then, so forcefully it was like a lightning bolt. She was getting so hurt because she was confusing lust and love. Well, no more!
She snapped her notebook shut. She knew exactly how she was going to frame her article now.
The server jumped with surprise.
“Thank you,” she said, grinning. “You’ve really helped me.”
“I have?” he asked, looking confused.
“Yup,” she said. She stood, slinging her notebook back into her bag. She took a final sip of coffee, then bent down and kissed the server’s freckled cheek. “Have a nice day,” she said, breezily.
Then she left, leaving the bemused server at her table.
*
Keira practically skipped to the walking bridge. Her mind was full of inspiration, at last. The Romance Guru had had a breakthrough and she couldn’t wait to share it with her readers.
Her readers.
The thought repeated in her mind, making her stomach leap with pleasure. How amazing to think that she now had an audience, that people cared about what she had to say, that she entertained and advised and supported other women just like herself. And that they in turn supported her, helping her make each small step towards independence and greater self-awareness. She grinned to herself.
The bridge appeared ahead of her and Keira saw that it was rammed with couples and covered in locks. She grabbed her notebook and beelined toward the first couple who looked local.
“Hej!” she said, smiling. “Taler du Engelsk?”
“Yes,” the man said. Like everyone Keira had seen in Denmark, he was exceptionally tall and wearing a bobble hat. “We speak English. Are you looking for something? We can give you directions.”
“Actually I’m a writer working on an article about love. I was wondering if I could interview you and your lovely partner here.” She gestured to the woman beside him, who was also very tall, and also in a bobble hat.
“Sure,” he said.
“Great.” Keira grinned. She flipped her notebook open. “So what brings you guys to the bridge today?”
“We’re putting on a lock, of course,” the woman said. She held up a huge gold lock that had two sets of initials drawn on it in thick, black pen, surrounded by a heart.
“And what does the lock symbolize for you?” Keira asked.
The woman pondered this for a long time. “Unity,” she said finally.
“Are you married?” Keira asked.
“Nope,” the woman replied.
“Are you planning on it?”
The woman looked up at her partner. “Nope. It’s not such a big thing over here.”
Keira frowned. “Marriage isn’t a big thing? What do you mean?”
The man spoke next. “Our society is about egalitarianism. Equality between the genders. We have equal things like paternity and maternity leave, no pay gap between the genders, and a lot less marriage.”
Keira scribbled everything down quickly. “Would you say, anecdotally speaking, that you have more relationships as a result? If people aren’t marrying then what about commitment?”
“Probably,” the woman replied. “People commit when they have kids, usually. That’s the signifier over here, not marriage. If people have kids they tend to stick together at least until they’ve left home for uni. That’s the contract, I would say.”
The man nodded in agreement. “Yeah, I think so too. It’s sort of like you’re saying, okay, we’re in this for at least twenty more years. But no one pretends it’s going to be forever. It’s illogical, don’t you think?”
Keira thought about how their words built on what she’d been thinking over breakfast. This whole pressure to settle, to find The One; what if it just didn’t work in modern society anymore? In the past people had so many fewer opportunities. The pool of mates was far smaller. People were expected to want to spend their twenties, thirties, forties, everything with the same person. One person was supposed to fulfill all their needs at every single one of their life stages. But the world didn’t work that way now. Now it was far more common to spend a whole decade after college working on yourself, to leave kids until your thirties. But then you’d still be considered young at fifty when those kids went off on their own. How likely was it, really, that the person you were with at fifty would still be the one for the next forty years of your life!
“I think I’d have to agree,” Keira replied, looking at the man. “Thanks, you’ve given me lots of food for thought.”
She watched as the couple put their lock on the bridge, wondering whether it might end up being more permanent than their actual relationship.
Keira was struck by a sudden desire then to put her own lock on the bridge. Not for a relationship, though, but for some other reason. What would a lock symbolize for her? Her job? Her independence? Or just herself? That no matter who she spent time with, who she shared those milestones of her life with, she’d always have herself?
Just then, Keira overhear
d what sounded like an argument coming from a little way down the bridge. She stepped closer, curious.
The couple were speaking English, and she could tell they were tourists just by their shorter stature.
“I said I wanted the lock to be pink!” the woman was exclaiming. In her hands was an ordinary bronze lock, like the ones most people used. “It’s not special if it’s not pink!”
The man she was with looked flustered. “I couldn’t get pink,” he told her. “It’s special because it’s ours.”
“It won’t stand out!” she yelled back, gesturing at the wall of bronze locks, of which theirs would just be another of many. “Why can’t you ever do anything I ask you to?”
The man looked hurt, crushed even, that what had clearly started as a romantic gesture had blown up into a public embarrassment.
The girl grabbed the lock from his hands then and threw it over the bridge. It plopped into the sea. Keira gasped.
The girl turned on her heel and stormed away, passing Keira in a flurry of anger. Everyone stared at her as she went. Her poor boyfriend just stood there, flabbergasted, watching her storm away. Then he suddenly returned to his senses.
“Bianca!” he yelled, hurrying past the crowds, his cheeks bright red. “Bianca, come back!”
Keira quickly wrote down the whole encounter. When she looked up again, there was a lock seller passing her pushing a wooden barrel. Every single lock in the barrel was pink. Keira laughed to herself, amused, and, without wasting a second, stopped the man pushing the barrel.
“Can I buy a lock please?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said with a smile, taking out one of the pink locks and handing it to her. “You like pink?”
Keira smirked to herself. “It’s my favorite color.”
She paid for the lock, thoroughly amused. Then she looked at it in her hand. She wasn’t sure what the lock would symbolize for her yet. But she knew that standing here, in Denmark, was a special experience and that putting a lock on the bridge would be like making her own mark. That she was doing it alone only made it more meaningful for her. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
