The Christmas Hypothesis

by Anna Blix

  “Yes, that’s definitely London. At least you’re in the right city, Niklas. Look, there’s the London Eye.”

  Niklas nodded excitedly. “That’s great! And if we can figure out what any of the other buildings are, we can use their position to determine the location of Sophie’s house.”

  “Really? Well, I don’t know what these buildings are. They look like they could be any tall office buildings. But this one here must be the Shard. It’s the tallest building in London.” Mrs Dollimore pointed to a building with a distinct tapered shape.

  Niklas nodded. “That’s all we need. We can calculate where Sophie lives. I should have thought of this before. Have you got a large map of London?”

  “I think I’ve got an Ordnance Survey somewhere. Wait here.” Mrs Dollimore left the room and was soon back with a folded map. She moved her tea to the windowsill and opened the map across the table.

  Niklas studied the network of roads, motorways and train lines, cut in half by the snake-like river Thames. “Have you got a pen?”

  Mrs Dollimore fetched a pen from the kitchen.

  “Can you show me where these two buildings are on this map?” Niklas asked.

  Mrs Dollimore examined the map. “The London Eye is right here. On the south side of the Thames.” She pointed it out to Niklas and he circled it.

  “Oh, do you mind if I draw on your map?”

  “Not at all, dear. Don’t you worry about it.” Mrs Dollimore studied the map, tracing the curve of the river with her finger. “The Shard is somewhere around here. Yes, there it is.” She tapped a location.

  Niklas circled the Shard. “Now let’s cross-reference Sophie’s drawing to these two points on the map. Look at this.” Niklas put the drawing in front of Mrs Dollimore. “It’s a simple case of geometrical triangulation. I can’t believe we didn’t think about it before. Have you got a long ruler and a protractor?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t used a protractor since I was in school. But there might be one amongst Malcolm’s things. Mind you, all of those boxes are up in the loft.”

  “I’ll help you with the ladder.”

  Mrs Dollimore used a pole with a hook to open a hatch in the ceiling above the upstairs landing, and a ladder extended down. She cautiously climbed up, while Niklas held the ladder steady. He glanced over at Clare’s door, wondering if she was still in there, hoping it would stay shut.

  A light went on in the loft, and Niklas could hear a rumble as Mrs Dollimore dragged heavy boxes across the floorboards.

  “Do you want me to come up and help you?”

  “No, I’m okay. I think I’ve got the right one now,” Mrs Dollimore said. “Yes, it has ‘Office’ written on it.” Niklas heard her open a cardboard box and shuffle its contents around.

  “Here’s a ruler.” Mrs Dollimore’s face appeared at the hatch. She handed down a nice long steel ruler to Niklas before she disappeared again.

  There was a clicking sound from Clare’s door. It opened slowly and she came out on the landing, looking questioningly at Niklas. Suddenly his face felt hot.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “I heard the noise. What are you doing?” Clare asked.

  “Erm… we’re just getting something down from the loft.” He pointed to the open hatch.

  Clare nodded. “Did she say what the phone call was about? Is her son coming?”

  “Oh.” Niklas lowered his voice and whispered, “He’s not coming. He’s… well, he’s not coming after all.”

  Clare whispered back, “He’s not coming?”

  Niklas shook his head. “No. She’s feeling upset about it, so let’s try to keep her occupied. And, erm, I’m sorry about before.”

  “Oh, that.” Clare’s lowered her eyes to the floor. “Don’t mention it.”

  More shuffling followed and Mrs Dollimore’s head appeared. “Is this a protractor?”

  “Yes, that’s a protractor,” Niklas said.

  She handed the protractor down to him. “I’ll just put the boxes back, then I’ll be right down.” More rumbling followed. After a minute, the light switched off and Mrs Dollimore’s foot searched out the ladder’s top rung.

  With the little lady safely back on firm ground, Niklas pushed the ladder back up and closed the hatch. “Okay. Let’s go draw some lines!” he said.

  “What exactly is it you’re doing?” Clare asked.

  “Niklas has figured out how to find Sophie’s house,” Mrs Dollimore said. Her cheeks were rosy from the effort.

  When they came back downstairs, Niklas showed Clare Sophie’s drawing. “So is this the famous letter?” Clare read the letter and turned to the drawing on the back.

  Niklas pointed to the background. “As you can see, this is the London skyline, and that’s what’s going to help us locate the house. We have identified three of these buildings: the London Eye, the Shard, and last but not least — Sophie’s house.”

  Clare nodded reluctantly. “Um, yes.”

  “Based on what we know about these two buildings…” Niklas pointed to the London Eye and the Shard, “…and their relative position in this picture, we can calculate the position of this one.” He pointed to Sophie’s house.

  Clare frowned. “But, it’s a child’s drawing, not a photograph. It’s not going to be to scale. And even if it were, it isn’t very detailed. Do you really think you’ll be able to use this to find out an address?”

  “Well, maybe not an exact address, but at least we’ll have a rough idea of what part of the city she lives in. We can use it as a starting point and gradually expand our search,” Niklas said. “Let’s find out the height of these two buildings.”

  Clare looked up the information. “The London Eye is 135 metres and the Shard is 306 metres tall,” she said.

  “That’s great.” Niklas scribbled some notes at the bottom of the map. Then he measured the heights of the buildings in Sophie’s drawing. “Look here, Sophie has drawn the Shard 116 millimetres tall.” He used the calculator on his phone. “If she was located at an equal distance to the two buildings, she would have drawn the London Eye 51 millimetres tall. But she hasn’t. She has drawn it bigger: 75 millimetres. What does that mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Mrs Dollimore said.

  “That this is a child’s sketch and not an exact technical drawing?” suggested Clare.

  “No. It means, of course, she was closer to the London Eye than to the Shard!” He looked from Mrs Dollimore to Clare to make sure they had understood.

  “Oh, I would never have thought of that!” Mrs Dollimore nodded. “Isn’t he clever, Clare?”

  “See, we have already eliminated half of the city from our search!” Niklas measured out the halfway point between the two buildings and drew a long line between them.

  “At every point along this line, the distance to the two buildings is the same. We want to be on this side of the line, where we are closer to the London Eye. Now let’s move on to draw up some parallaxes.”

  Niklas drew some more straight lines on Mrs Dollimore’s map and measured out the angles between them. “The trick is to find out what angle of observation would give you this view. Look at how the two buildings are positioned, relative to each other. The Shard is on the left, and the London Eye on the right. There is only a narrow separation between them, but they’re not overlapping.” Niklas made some more measurements and drew even more lines.

  “I’d say we should be looking in this area.” He circled an area in West London, about the size of a tennis ball. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Erm… I guess you’ve got to start somewhere,” Clare said.

  “You’re very intelligent, Niklas,” Mrs Dollimore said. “I would never have thought that up.”

  “Do you know anything about this part of London? Are there any residential houses there, similar to this drawing?” Niklas asked.

  Mrs Dollimore leaned in and took a closer look. “Oh, that’s near where I go to the dentist. You can take the Undergro
und from here — it’s only a few stops. Yes, I would think you’d find some nice terraces there.”

  “That’s great. I really think we’re onto something,” Niklas said.

  Mrs Dollimore picked up Sophie’s letter and studied it. She ran her finger over the drawing. “Look at this,” she said. “It looks like Sophie has rubbed something out here, next to the door.”

  Niklas peered closer. She was right. The drawing was in pencil, and carefully coloured in with crayon. But a small area next to the door was blank, as if Sophie had purposefully coloured in around it. As if something had been written in pencil, and then rubbed out — something like a door number? Niklas ran his finger over it. There was a definite indentation.

  “Let me try something,” Mrs Dollimore said. She took a pencil and held it sideways. Very lightly, she rubbed it over the white area. Gradually, a number materialised. In Sophie’s childish handwriting, the number fifty-seven emerged. “Look at that, Niklas!” She smiled proudly.

  Niklas nodded. “Yes! You’ve found the house number.” Mrs Dollimore had done it! This changed everything for tomorrow. Now he stood a fair chance. He might actually find Sophie’s house. He felt goosebumps crop up on his arms. It was all falling into place. What if he managed to pull the whole thing off?

  Mrs Dollimore patted his back. “That’s lovely, Niklas. You’re all set now. You’ve got your present, and your map…”

  “…And a reindeer.”

  ‘Einar’s not coming with you tomorrow,’ Clare said. “I’m going to take off as soon as I get the car back, so we won’t be here.” She hesitated, then she added, “You’ll have to call me and let me know how it went.”

  Mrs Dollimore folded the map back up. “Here you go, Niklas. Bring this with you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll put it in my coat pocket so I don’t forget.” Niklas stored the map and Sophie’s letter in his parka’s inner pocket.

  He went back upstairs to his room. It was completely dark outside, or at least as dark as it ever got in this big city. The neighbouring houses all had their curtains drawn, but faint light found its way through the fabric and around the edges of some windows, suggesting people were inside. Niklas tried to imagine the people in one other home, walking around in their bubbles, invisible to the outside world. Maybe a family, with children and parents. He could see cars drive past, down on the street. In every car was a person. Every now and then, pedestrians passed each other on the pavement. Heads down, without acknowledgement. They could just as well have been walking in a void, or in a snowstorm. It was funny — people seemed to be just as isolated in this big city as he had been in the Arctic.

  Maybe Tom was feeling isolated at the research station. The others must have gone home by now. By now, there would only be Tom and Peter left. The station was different in the winter. Quiet. Eerie. Niklas had never been bothered by the solitude. But maybe Tom was. After all, he was used to always having a group of admirers around him. What if Tom had to face some hard truths about himself, now the others had gone home?

  35

  Niklas tidied the house all day. Took out the rubbish and vacuumed. He opened the windows and let the soothing May wind in, airing out old dust. The pink button-down shirt he’d bought himself suddenly felt wrong, too formal. He ran upstairs and changed into a black T-shirt. The last half hour he spent intermittently sitting on the sofa and going to the window to look down the road. At a quarter past three, the doorbell rang.

  Niklas hurried to open it. And there she was. Emma was standing on his porch, with a laptop bag over her shoulder. “Hi,” she said. “Thank you for offering to help.”

  Niklas stepped aside to let her in. He showed Emma to his parents’ dining room, with its mahogany table, big enough for ten, and oil paintings by Finnish modernistic artists — all carefully selected by Mum. Emma opened her bag on the table and got out her laptop.

  “I don’t know why it’s doing this,” she said. “Every time I start it up, it goes into some kind of secure mode.”

  “Would you like a cinnamon roll?” Niklas said. “I’ve baked. And there’s coffee. Do you want some?”

  At first, Emma seemed surprised, but then she accepted.

  Niklas brought the coffee and cinnamon rolls to the table. He opened the laptop.

  He couldn’t believe his luck. Emma was in his house. He hadn’t thought about her for months, before she was suddenly standing there in front of him, outside the canteen. He had given up on ever seeing her again, and now here she was.

  “Do you still work with Pekka?” Emma asked. “He helps me with computer stuff sometimes.”

  “Pekka Aho?”

  “Yeah, the three of us used to hang out back at uni. Don’t you remember?”

  Niklas nodded. “Yes, I work with him.” He opened a terminal window and typed in a command.

  “You’re in his research group, aren’t you?”

  He nodded again, although it wasn’t exactly Pekka’s research group.

  “I thought so. Did you hear about the paper he got published in ‘Physics Review’? Wasn’t that great? He’s away now, at a conference, to present the results.”

  Niklas saw Pekka nearly every day. How come he had not said anything about still being in touch with Emma? Maybe they could have met up — the three of them. They could have gone to a restaurant, or to the cinema. Pekka and Emma used to go to the cinema.

  He muttered, “The access permissions on these files are all wrong.”

  Emma took a small bite of her cinnamon roll. “He won’t be back until next week. Lucky you were able to help me instead.” She looked around the room. “Do you live here with your parents?”

  “No. My parents live abroad. In Tenerife. I thought I’d told you.”

  “Really?”

  “I look after the house for them. And the car.” He sipped his coffee. “We can go for a ride sometime if you want. The countryside is nice.”

  Niklas changed the file permissions and closed the terminal. “Do you want another cinnamon roll?” he said, but Emma declined the offer. “My disputation is next week.”

  Emma smiled. “That’s great — congratulations.”

  “You could come if you want to?”

  She blinked at him but didn’t answer.

  “I can get a place for you at the karonkka. The menu is rosemary lamb with roast potatoes. Would you like that? There’s a vegetarian option as well. Wait, I’ll check what it is…”

  Emma shook her head. “That’s okay,” she said. “I’m not a vegetarian.”

  “So do you think you want to come?”

  “It sounds nice.” She smiled again and stared at the floor.

  “I think it’s good now.” Niklas switched off the laptop. “Let’s just start it back up and check.”

  They waited for the computer to restart. “Do you want to stay for dinner? I can cook.”

  Emma flinched. “Oh.”

  “Do you like spaghetti Bolognese?”

  She put the half-eaten cinnamon roll down on the table. “Um, thanks, but I don’t think I have time today.”

  “It’ll be quick. I can put it on right now.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe another time.”

  The laptop started up just fine, with all the files in order, and Emma put it back in her shoulder-bag. Niklas wrapped some cinnamon rolls in a plastic bag for her and saw her to the door.

  “The defence is at noon, next Friday. And the karonkka is at seven. Maybe I’ll see you there?” He handed her the bag of cinnamon rolls.

  “Yes, maybe. See you.” She made a move to leave, but then she suddenly turned back, put her hand on his shoulder, and kissed him on the lips. “Thank you, Niklas,” she said and walked away.

  Niklas stayed in the doorway with his head spinning and watched her walk down the road.

  36

  It was December 24. Niklas was wearing his new jumper and had parted his hair the way Chloe the hairdresser had shown him. He sat at the table and sneaked two smal
l parcels under the Christmas tree. He noticed Mrs Dollimore had replaced the wipe-clean cloth with one in white linen, and a pleasant smell of cooking came from the kitchen. Outside the window, the sun was already at the peak of its arc, but it had only just risen above the rooftops on the other side of the gardens, casting long shadows across the grass. Frost crusted the shed’s roof and parts of the lawn.

  Mrs Dollimore appeared in the kitchen doorway. “There you are, Niklas! I was looking for you earlier. I’ve asked Clare if she’ll join us for an early Christmas dinner, before driving back home. Won’t that be nice, the three of us together?”

  Niklas nodded. Clare was going back home. He wondered if he’d ever see her again. She’d probably not want anything to do with him after what happened.

  Mrs Dollimore continued, “She’s got her car back, so she can take off as soon as we’ve finished. And the girl’s got to eat. She’s much better off eating here with us than stopping at some service station, don’t you think? Will you help me with the china, dear?”

  Niklas followed Mrs Dollimore into the kitchen.

  “The Christmas china is in the top cupboard. I keep it out of the way as I only have it out once a year. Can you reach it? Or I can get a chair out…”

  The phone vibrated in Niklas’s pocket. He couldn’t think of anyone who might want to call him. It must be a wrong number. “Which plates do you want?” he asked.

  “Oh, let me think. Can you get me three of the big ones…” Mrs Dollimore pointed to a stack of plates at the back of the cupboard. “…And three bowls.”

  Niklas took the plates and the bowls down. The phone kept ringing.

  “And the big serving dish. Oh, and a little one as well. That should do it. Thank you, Niklas.”

  Niklas put the tableware on the worktop and got his phone out. He didn’t recognise the number. “Hello?”

  “Dr Heikkinen?” a woman’s voice said.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Margaret, from the job centre.”

  “Hello…”