A couple told Hannah they’d never seen her shop before – she didn’t tell them it had been there for ten months – and one telephoned friends to abandon Västerlånggatan for the hidden gem of Hannah Anna Butik. Between ringing up sales she hurried to replace sold items with others of sizes and colours to maintain Nico’s magic.
She wished she’d taken his phone number so she could text: Clever clogs! Things are flying off the shelves before trade slowed to its more usual pace. But the tide of customers never dried up. Her takings didn’t actually double, she saw when she finally took a reading from the till at the Sunday closing hour of five p.m., but this had been her best Sunday’s trading since Hannah Anna Butik opened its doors. Sales were up sixty-six per cent on the Sunday before.
Sixty-six per cent!
Her heart soared. Whether from early Christmas shopping, a cruise liner disgorging shopping-hungry passengers or Nico’s magical merchandising, sales were up. ‘Keep this up and you’ll be in Västerlånggatan in a year,’ she told herself.
The shop bell pinged and she glanced up, formulating the Swedish to say she was sorry but she was about to close. Instead, she laughed. Framed in the doorway was Nico, orange pumpkins beneath each arm.
‘Finishing touches,’ he said, toeing the door closed. One pumpkin he placed carefully in the corner of the window display and the other atop the hat stand, all the time nodding along to her ravings about the astonishing day’s trading. ‘Yeah,’ he said, as if he’d expected nothing less. ‘Are you hungry?’
Hannah paused. Was this a trick question, bearing in mind what had happened the evening before?
‘I know a nice little place,’ he went on.
As he kept his gaze on the pumpkin, Hannah couldn’t gauge whether her reaction was important or not. She glanced out at the now-dark afternoon and thought of the apartment, empty until Albin arrived home late tonight, no doubt to plummet into bed, exhausted. ‘I could eat,’ she answered lightly, beginning her closing-up routine. Nico, evidently feeling at home after a morning working at the shop, replenished a few shelf spaces she hadn’t got to.
Then they fastened their coats and Nico led the way across the cobbles of Stortorget, which were just beginning to sparkle with frost, heading downhill, crossing Västerlånggatan, passing closed shops with heavy knits and wooden clogs in their windows, taking an alley so tiny they had to walk in single file to reach the broader street of Stora Nygatan. He stopped outside a dark green frontage, the glass lettered in gold with the restaurant’s name: Hörnan – the Corner. Inside, stairs plunged steeply to a cellar bistro with a vaulted brick ceiling. Candles in bottles stood on red gingham cloths and the smell of coffee enveloped Hannah and Nico as they took a table by a panelled wall.
Hannah was curious. Nico had brought her to a restaurant. Yesterday, in Burger Town, he’d eaten one French fry.
Perhaps guessing her thoughts, once they were both seated he began to speak. ‘You brought me up short yesterday with your reaction to my appearance. Scruffy clothes couldn’t be enough alone to prompt your reaction so I presume I look thin to you?’
Although her heart put in a heavy beat at the challenge in his voice she didn’t see lying would be a useful response. ‘Thin’s the right word,’ she said gravely. ‘In fact, too thin.’
His eyes flickered. Maybe he’d been hoping for another answer but he answered honestly. ‘I weighed myself in the hotel gym. I’m ten kilos under the minimum healthy weight for my height.’
A quick mental conversion told Hannah ten kilos was about twenty-two pounds. ‘Sounds about right,’ she said cautiously.
His brows lowered. ‘I’ve had a word with myself. My daughter needs me healthy so I’m going to pay more attention to my eating habits. And I’m going to try not to look as if I woke up in a ditch.’ He lifted a hand, as if to stop Hannah commenting. ‘To come clean, burger bars sometimes make me uncomfortable. That’s the food I was discouraged from eating when I was playing hockey, so I craved it. I ate it. Then I … got rid of it. It was a difficult time, changing countries and school systems. Mum wouldn’t come to the UK with Dad’s job so my parents split up and my brother Mattias stayed in Sweden with Mum. I’d always spent more time with