by Anna Blix
“What do you mean?” Mum said.
Niklas drew a deep breath. “He said you had told him something about me. That I was different, somehow.”
There was a long pause before his mother spoke. “Did he?” Another long pause. “Well… You know what it was like when you were little.”
“No. I don’t. I can’t remember. You have to tell me.”
The phone line crackled. Niklas pressed his ear to the receiver.
“It wasn’t always easy. You never made any friends, Niklas. Always stuck to yourself. And the tantrums, of course.”
“Tantrums?” Niklas didn’t remember any tantrums.
“You screamed for hours. Sometimes we didn’t even know why you were screaming. Then you shut down. You kind of glazed over. We couldn’t get through to you. Don’t you remember?”
“No.” He tried to think back. Maybe he had screamed. Yes. He remembered lying on his bed, screaming into his pillow. Why had he screamed? Was it just the one time, or had it happened more often?
“Well, it got better. With time — that’s the main thing. And you’re doing okay now, aren’t you?”
Was he doing okay? He didn’t know. If Mum said so, he probably was. “But… Did you try to get me some help?”
“What do you mean, ‘help’?”
Niklas twisted the telephone cord between his fingers. “I don’t know. Take me to a doctor?”
“A doctor? No. I mean, you weren’t like that. There was nothing wrong with you. As such. Apart from being really, really hard work.”
“And different?”
“Yes! Different. You were different. There’s nothing wrong with being different. Nothing a doctor can do about it.” Her laugh echoed down the line.
Niklas gazed out the window at the snow covering the drive and the Volkswagen. He saw his own footprints going back and forth between the porch and the road. Back and forth. Was he so different that she couldn’t bear the thought of living in the same country? No, it wasn’t like that at all. Niklas must have completely misunderstood. Besides, didn’t everyone struggle sometimes? And it was a long time ago. He’d probably not been so different after all.
But he was. Niklas knew he was.
25
Niklas was buying Sophie’s scooter from a shop. After all, it was the sensible thing to do. He couldn’t do everything by himself — even Santa Claus needed his elves, and Mrs Dollimore had been perfectly right to suggest those elves could be a group of cheerfully singing factory workers. Why wouldn’t they be? Leave the toy-making to the pros. That would give him more time to concentrate on the distribution. Wasn’t that what Santa Claus did best? Whizz around the world, dropping presents — or in this case, present — through chimneys? Nobody said he had to actually manufacture the present himself. In fact, he would be much better off buying one.
He had travelled on the Underground to Aspenwood Shopping Centre, a newly opened complex to which Mrs Dollimore had directed him. She’d said it had a well-stocked toyshop, although Niklas would like to see it for himself before he believed it. The sun had come out this Saturday afternoon, and for the first time since he’d arrived in London, the temperature was close to freezing. Finally, it had begun to feel like winter. He exhaled and watched his breath condense into a cloud of vapour. This was more like it, he thought as he walked across the busy car park.
Niklas groped for his mother’s postcard in his back pocket and pulled out a lump of cardboard, soaked in canal water and then dried, formed into a firm papier-mâché pebble. His own petrified Beach-Santa. Who was having a Sunny Christmas now? With a “Ho ho ho,” he walked up to the revolving doors. People were streaming in and out, and Niklas patiently awaited his slot before he joined the carousel, along with three other shoppers. Taking short steps, gallantly avoiding trampling anybody’s heels, he made his way around the semi-circle and emerged on the other side, where he passed two security guards in black uniforms and high visibility vests, positioned just inside the doors and visually scanning everyone who entered.
Niklas stopped to orient himself. The centre was bustling with people. Christmas songs were playing, oversized red baubles hung from the ceiling and a slow procession of shoppers moved from shop to shop down the centre aisle. He passed a womenswear shop. In the window were a family of mannequins, all sporting mismatched Christmas jumpers in bright colours.
Straight ahead, Niklas found a plan of the shopping centre, displayed on a large screen. The plan showed a map of the two-storey centre, with all the shops and restaurants listed and categorised by function. He ran his finger down the list. Under “Children’s Clothing and Toys”, he found it — “Land of Toys”. He pressed the touch screen. A square lit up, and a dashed line indicated the path he was advised to take to get there. Naturally, it was at the opposite end of the shopping centre, and would involve a walk through the whole complex. But today, Niklas didn’t mind walking through crowds of people. He was in a good mood, and about to take a significant step towards getting Sophie the present she had asked for.
The homeware shop to his left had decided on a window display with a Christmas dinner table, complete with Christmas china. Who in their right mind bought Christmas china? Probably the same people who ate mince pies. He shuddered at the memory. Christmas China. Where did they get everything from? There had certainly not been any need for Christmas china back at the polar station.
“Excuse me.” One of the two security guards had come up behind him. “Can you come with me, please?”
Niklas followed the guard back to the entrance, where his colleague waited.
“I’m afraid we have to ask you to leave.”
“What?”
“Regretfully, you don’t meet the required dress code, sir. When our customers come here and see…” The guard gestured towards Niklas. “They have certain expectations of their shopping experience. And we want to make sure we meet those expectations.”
What dress code? Niklas looked down at his apparel. He didn’t know there was a dress code at the shopping centre. Besides, his clothes were perfectly functional. And he’d been in the canal! Surely they couldn’t expect his clothes to smell of roses after such an ordeal.
“I fell in a canal.” When he got back, he would ask Mrs Dollimore if she could put a washing machine load on for him. “I’m only going to get one thing, then I’ll be out of here.”
“No. You have to leave right now, sir,” The guard stood with his hands on his hips, blocking Niklas’s way back into the centre.
There was no use in arguing. “Fine, I’ll leave,” Niklas said. He took a few steps towards the revolving doors, but then he sharply doubled back. Darting into the shopping centre, past the two guards, he ran towards the procession of shoppers.
The guards were on him in an instant. They grabbed him by his arms and dragged him outside.
“I said leave,” bellowed one of them. “You should have just left. Now, can you show me some ID?”
Niklas didn’t move.
“This could have been easy, but when you refused to leave, it became an incident I have to report. And for that, I need to see your ID. Otherwise, I have to call the police.” The guard stared him down. “Do you understand?”
Niklas reluctantly reached for his wallet and got out his Finnish driving license. He handed it to the guard, who held it up and carefully compared the photograph to Niklas’s face. Then he wrote down the details. “Are you aware this driving license expired five years ago?”
Niklas shook his head. “I haven’t done any driving for a while.”
“And did you know you can get sent back to Finland for sleeping rough?” continued the guard.
Sleeping rough? What was this surreal nightmare? He couldn’t go back to Finland. Not now. He had to give Sophie her present. He had to validate the hypothesis! “I don’t sleep rough! I stay at a bed and breakfast. You can call my landlady.”
The guard sneered. “Don’t move.” He turned to his colleague. The two spoke in
low voices. Finally, he said to Niklas, “We’re going to let you go now. But don’t ever show your face here again.” He handed Niklas back his expired driving license.
Niklas could feel the guard’s gaze on his back as he walked away from the building. He walked straight ahead for a minute, then he turned around to look. The two guards had gone back inside and he stopped.
What was he supposed to do now? He didn’t want to go back to Mrs Dollimore empty-handed. It was the last Saturday before Christmas, and he couldn’t afford to lose a whole day. But he didn’t dare to venture back inside the shopping centre either. The guards were sure to catch him if he tried to sneak past them.
Niklas recalled the map. The toyshop was located at the opposite end of the centre. Wouldn’t there be an entrance that end as well? If he walked around on the outside, maybe he could enter through another door, and quickly pop into Land of Toys for Sophie’s scooter? It was worth a try, but he had to be careful.
He rounded the large car park along the outer perimeter. Even though there was room for hundreds of cars, it was full to the brim. Drivers circulating in search of a free spot were in fierce competition. Angry horns sounded. Metal scraped against metal as somebody tried to squeeze into a too-narrow space. Niklas walked all the way around the car park to the other side. He cautiously approached the revolving doors and peered inside. Shoppers passed in and out, obstructing his view, but from what he could tell, there were no guards in sight.
He brushed off some dried mud from his parka, took a deep breath and stepped through the doors. The entrance to Land of Toys was just to his left. He slipped in unnoticed.
The toyshop was packed with people. A little boy strapped in his pushchair was screaming at the top of his lungs, reaching for a big inflatable hammer. The boy’s mother had a haunted look on her face and pushed her way forward through the crowd, using the pushchair as an icebreaker.
Niklas made his way through the mass of people until he found the shelf with ride-on toys. The selection was sparse and the shelves half-empty. A few blue scooters remained, boxed up and in need of assembly. Then there was a green model with a seat, clearly intended for toddlers. But there, right in front of him on the top shelf, was a red scooter, the only one left of its kind. It came boxed and was recommended for children aged between four and eight years. Niklas reached out for it, but somebody got in before him. A tall man in a hideous floral shirt grabbed the box right in front of his eyes.
Before Niklas had a chance to react, the man was heading for the tills. “Excuse me!” called Niklas, but the man was already too far away to hear him. Shoppers quickly filled the gap behind him, and soon a woman picked one of the blue scooters off the shelf. It was clear he needed to act fast if he wanted any present at all this afternoon. He picked up one of the remaining blue scooters. It was the best he could do, and Sophie would still be pleased, he was sure. It would be good for her, even, learning she couldn’t always get exactly what she wished for. An important life lesson. Yes, a blue scooter would, in fact, be better.
He brought the box to the till and joined the queue, where he found himself right behind the scooter-snatching man in the floral shirt. Should he say anything? He stared at the man’s shirt and decided against it. It was best not to make contact.
The man put the box up on the counter. “Gift wrapped, please.” The shop attendant wrapped the red scooter in shiny green wrapping paper and attached a large red bow to the parcel before she took payment and handed it over.
When it was his turn, Niklas was awarded a green parcel with a big red bow of his own and walked out of the toyshop, carrying the present in a large plastic bag.
Just as he headed out the doors, two security guards appeared from his left. They both stopped, stared at him and one of them pointed. “Stop!”
Without hesitation, Niklas turned and ran for the exit. He sprinted as fast as he could towards the revolving doors, and he would probably have made it, had it not been for a group of shoppers, blocking his way. “Let me through!” he shouted as he ran towards them, but his voice was drowned out by the Christmas music pouring out of the speakers above. He stopped and glanced back. The guards were closing on him. There was nowhere to go.
“Didn’t I tell you to leave this place, and not come back?” shouted a guard. He grabbed Niklas’s arm. “What are you doing here again?”
“I’m a paying customer!” Niklas brandished his bag. “I have the receipt.”
The guard took no notice of his excuse. “You were warned once. We’re going to have to call the police now.”
Niklas wriggled to get out of his grip, but the guard wrestled him to the floor and twisted his arm behind his back.
Niklas lay on his stomach on the hard tiles, watching shoes and trouser-legs walk past. He didn’t dare to move again, but pleaded, “I’m done now. I’ll go — I promise.”
The guard holding him down took his walkie-talkie and spoke into it. “Requesting backup at the north entrance.” A rasping noise came out of the speaker, and after a while, a voice said, “I’ll be right there.”
People stared at him as they passed. A mother in a beige coat and a little girl in a red jacket and plaited hair walked by. “What’s that man doing on the floor, Mummy?”
“He’s a shoplifter. Don’t worry, sweetheart. The police will pick him up in no time.”
“I’m not a shoplifter, I’m a paying customer,” called Niklas.
The mother ushered her daughter towards the doors.
“I’m Santa Claus!” he shouted after them. “Tell them to let me go, or Christmas will be cancelled.”
The little girl gazed at him with big eyes. “Are you really Santa?”
The mother pulled the little girl by her arm. “Of course not. The real Santa lives at the North Pole, you know that.”
The security guard twisted Niklas’s arm even tighter behind his back. “Don’t speak!”
At that moment, somebody screamed in terror further inside the shopping centre. The scream was followed by an outburst of panic-stricken shrieks, and then the commotion started. The shouts and screams grew louder and Niklas saw a mass of people thundering towards him. They rushed past him up to the revolving doors, which jammed under the pressure. People pushed from behind and those at the front were pressed up against the glass, banging their palms on the doors. With nowhere to escape, people packed themselves into the already crowded Land of Toys, while others sought cover in the menswear shop next door. Niklas lifted his head from the floor and tried to look up. What was going on?
The guards let go of Niklas and ran towards the side doors, pushing their way through the panicking crowd, struggling to reach the front. People pressed against each other. An elderly woman fell over and was pulled to her feet by two men behind her. Finally, the guards managed to open the side doors and let a stream of people out.
Niklas saw his window of opportunity and scampered to his feet. Nobody seemed to take any notice of him. He got ready to join in the flow of people and disappear out the doors when he heard a sound that made him stop and listen. It was a sound that could be heard over the screams and the shouts. It could be heard over the music, blaring out of the speakers. The sound of sleigh bells.
26
Emma never graduated from the University of Helsinki. Halfway through the third year, she took up a job as a receptionist at a law firm in the city, and after that, Niklas didn’t see her. He ended up working with Pekka Aho whenever teamwork was required, and the two of them developed a friendship of sorts. One day, at the end of their studies, Juha announced to the class that the physics department required two new PhD candidates. Niklas and Pekka both went to see him during the break, and after a quick interview, they were both accepted.
Pekka Aho shone in his work. It was clear from early on that he was a natural and he consistently produced work of the most enlightened variety. Soon, his name was on the lips of the whole physics department. Niklas, on the other hand, struggled. He missed the structure
of having set assignments and consistently failed at taking initiative in his own work. One afternoon when Niklas was idling away the hours in his office, Juha came to see him. He sat down and put his coffee on Niklas’s desk.
“There’s going to be a materials physics conference in London next month. I don’t know if you’ve heard?”
Niklas nodded.
Juha peered at him over his round glasses. “Pekka is going there to present his work.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been thinking, maybe you should go too. Even though you don’t have much to present yet. It could be a good experience for you. What do you think?”
“Yes.” This could be his chance to prove himself. Niklas smiled. Challenge accepted.
“You could produce a poster with what you’ve done so far, so you can get to practice talking about your work. It will be good for you.”
The exhibition centre was an enormous conference hall with a stage at one end and an area dedicated to poster sessions at the other. Pekka Aho’s poster presentation had been a roaring success and he had attracted a large crowd to their booth. He was now discussing his work with twenty other delegates of different nationalities, who all seemed to take a keen interest in his results.
Niklas was standing behind Pekka, squeezed into a corner. Behind him was his poster, stapled to the grey partition screen. Unlike Pekka, nobody had stopped to talk to him. Over the heads in the crowd, he spotted Juha approaching, squeezing through the crowd with a man following him. Niklas lowered his head again.
Before long, Juha had pushed through Pekka’s audience and was standing in front of Niklas. His breathing was laboured when he said in English, “Niklas, I’d like you to meet Dr Svantesson from Sweden.”
Dr Svantesson shook Niklas’s hand.
“Dr Svantesson is researching properties of layered graphite,” continued Juha.
