The Little Café in Copenhagen: Fall in love and escape the winter blues with this wonderfully heartwarming and feelgood novel

Chapter 10

Being on a guided tour with everything organised for you was, I decided, a rare luxury. Our first walk took us to the Little Mermaid, considerably smaller than I was expecting – despite the clue in the name! Then on to the royal palace at Amalieburg, actually four palaces arranged around a square, with soldiers who looked remarkably like our own Queen’s guard in their traditional bearskins with dark navy tunics instead of our red ones. Mads got very excited when he spotted the Danish flag flying over one of the palaces, a sign that Margrethe, as if she were a neighbour rather than the Queen, was in residence.

He grinned. ‘Our royal family is very popular and Margrethe is famous for being an unrepentant die-hard smoker, even in public.’

Clearly with no sign of the queen popping out for a quick fag round the back of the recycling shed (the Danes are big on recycling), we gave up queen spotting and headed for lunch at Ida Davidsen, a family run restaurant concern ‘crazy for’ the typical Danish open sandwiches, smorrobrod.

Sophie made Mads say the word five times before she was happy with her own attempt. He explained that Danish pronunciation was very difficult for foreigners as the Danish alphabet has 29 letters, the ø, å, æ all being separate letters with a distinct and very subtle vowel sound that was very difficult for people to reproduce.

I fell into step next to her as we headed for lunch.

‘I’m so looking forward to this. Open sandwiches here are amazing. I can’t wait to try them.’ She paused and gave my arm squeeze. ‘Thank you so much Kate for inviting me. This is going to be such an amazing trip.’ She beamed at me so warmly I smiled back.

‘My pleasure. I’m so glad you could come. And you genuinely wanted to come.’ I glanced over my shoulder. ‘I had a devil of a job persuading some people.’

Everyone but Ben had been asking lots of questions. He’d spent more time on his phone and several times I’d caught him yawning as if bored. He could at least make some effort.

‘Really? I can’t believe that,’ said Sophie looking round at the others. ‘Who wouldn’t want to spend five days in Copenhagen instead of being at work? Although, it is a pretty mixed bunch you’ve ended up with. David’s lovely. I’ve been on a trip with him before. Easy going. You’ll have no trouble with him. Avril and Conrad, I’m not so sure. And Ben, I don’t know at all, but he’s a bit of a hottie, isn’t he?’ She waggled her fair eyebrows in a woeful attempt at lechery.

I shrugged as if far too professional to comment. If only she knew. I was ready to strangle him. He’d made sod all effort to join in, constantly tapping away on his phone like a recalcitrant teenager and yawning when he thought no one was looking. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help watching him, constantly trying to gauge his reactions, which so far hadn’t seemed that positive.

‘Good job I’m all loved up with James.’

‘Your boyfriend?’ I seized on the change of subject. I didn’t want to think about or discuss Ben, especially not regarding the subject of hotness.

‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘He’s pretty lovely.’

‘How long have you been together?’

‘Nearly two years.’ She hugged herself and glanced at me. ‘I’m hoping he might pop the question soon.’

‘Are you living together?’ I asked.

‘Sort of, that’s the only difficulty. His mother is quite ill, so he works in London four days a week and then goes back to Cornwall on a Thursday to look after her. Honestly the care system is crap. You can’t get carers over the weekend. It makes things a bit trickier but I keep thinking that if I can freelance one day we could both move down there. I don’t want to live in London for ever. What about you? You with anyone?’

I was about to tell her about Josh but caught Ben giving me one of his usual glacial glares, in sharp contrast to the warm looks the first time I met him.

My lip curled. ‘No, I was. But I’m off men for the foreseeable future.’

The restaurant looked unassuming from the outside, almost like the front of someone’s home but inside had that stylish Danish design look that was quickly becoming apparent was part of the Danish psyche. Dark wood tables and chairs were arranged in neat order while the white painted walls were full of photos of famous patrons, cartoons and several of a very smiley Ida Davidsen, who was very much a real person.

Who knew that the humble sandwich could be such a work of art? The menu featured over 250 and we were urged to go and check out the rainbow display in the cabinet. It was so utterly mouth-watering, I wanted one of everything.

Piled on the dark rye bread were rows of thick juicy pink prawns, the deep amber of smoked salmon in rolls with black fish roe and wedges of sunshine yellow lemon sprinkled with dill, ripples of rare roast beef decorated with delicate shavings of pale cucumber and rolled herring encircled by quartered eggs, chopped chives and long slivers of spring onion.

Sophie was in seventh, eighth and ninth heaven. ‘I think I might have to stay here forever. How on earth do you choose?’

‘My stomach thinks it’s died and gone to heaven,’ said Conrad, pulling out a pair of glasses and studying the display.

‘I’m not even sure what half of this is?’ said Ben.

‘That’s slices of pork,’ said Sophie pointing. ‘That’s …’

She was very knowledgeable as you would expect from a food writer.

‘Gosh, they look pretty calorie heavy,’ said Avril, rubbing at her none-existent stomach. ‘I don’t want to go home the size of a house.’

Looking at her skeletal tiny frame, going home the size of a normal person would be quite a feat.

‘Can we order some extra?’ asked Sophie as everyone mused out loud about what they might choose when we sat down at our table, which had been reserved. The place was almost full, it was very popular. ‘Everyone needs to try something new.’

‘Hmm, I’m not sure that I fancy pickled herring, thank you very much,’ said Avril turning up her patrician nose as she read the menu.

‘Ah, but you must for your food education. What if you discovered you loved it?’ said Sophie waving her hands towards the displays.

Avril winced and went back to her menu.

‘There are some amazing ideas here. I think I can do a whole recipe feature on open sandwiches for the magazine.’

‘That would be good,’ I said, my brain clicking into action. ‘Maybe you could do a cookery demonstration, a reader event for the magazine at the store.’

‘Won’t it have a café or restaurant?’

‘No, apparently that’s a very English thing.’

‘Shame, but I’m sure we could definitely do a cookery demo,’ said Sophie, bubbling with immediate enthusiasm. ‘My editor would love that. We’re always looking for subscriber events. I could talk about the types of bread. Rye bread. The toppings, traditional and modern twists. Pickled herring and somersalat, smoked cheese and radish, corned beef and Danish pickles.’

‘Sounds great. And we could tweet about it. Take lots of pictures and run them on Instagram.’

‘And Facebook,’ Sophie chipped in.

I whipped out my notebook.

‘God, do you ever switch off?’ asked Ben from across the table. For most of the morning he’d had little to say and seemed far more interested in his phone. As soon as we’d sat down he’d asked the waitress for the WiFi code.

‘It’s my job,’ I said pointedly. Since we’d arrived he’d barely joined in, focussing on his own emails.

‘Some job,’ he muttered, going back to his phone again.

The group dynamic splintered into two main conversations, Sophie, David and I chatting with Mads, while Conrad and Avril had discovered a rich vein of gossip about an editor they both knew on a celebrity gossip magazine. Fiona scuttled around the table when we’d arrived, selecting the furthermost chair, tucked back in the shadows as if hoping to fade into them. She sat fiddling with her camera and I wasn’t sure how to involve her without blatantly pointing out her isolation.

Ben seemed equally reticent but at that moment, looked up and caught me surreptitiously studying him.

He straightened and leaned across the table and spoke to Fiona.

‘Any good shots?’

Her head lifted with her usual startled fawn look of alarm and she froze for a second.

But the others were busy talking, so she handed her camera over to Ben. Head bent he pored over the images, holding the camera between careful fingers, nodding every now and then.

‘These are great, Fiona,’ he said quietly about to hand the camera back but unfortunately Avril heard him.

‘Oooh let’s have a look.’

I saw the pained expression on Fiona’s face and the apologetic one on Ben’s as everyone crowded around behind his chair for a closer look.

‘Wow, these are really quite good,’ said Avril. ‘Great shot of the Little Mermaid. I love that picture of the palace in the foreground and the sea in the background. I took one and posted it on Twitter but it’s nowhere near as good as that one.’

Ben scrolled through them. ‘I’m not sure about that one,’ he teased pausing at a blurry shot of David and Conrad in front of one of the soldiers outside the palace.

‘For the love of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, please delete that shocker. I look like a geriatric drag queen after a nine-day bender,’ drawled Conrad with dramatic weariness. Instead of ducking her head and blushing, Fiona let out a small giggle.

‘I’ll delete that one for you.’

‘I should bloody well hope so,’ said Conrad. ‘Any chance of a glass of wine with lunch? I’ve built up a rare thirst.’

Ben passed the camera down to Sophie and I who were on the opposite side of the table and we flipped through the digital shots. Fiona was a very talented photographer. She’d captured a few of the group and I was struck by the pictures of Avril. No wonder she thought they were so good; she looked like some Hollywood starlet, although clearly conscious of the camera as there was a posed quality to a lot of the shots. There was one exception. It had been taken while we were at the Little Mermaid statue and Avril was gazing out beyond the statue to sea, lost in thought. Fiona had captured Avril bathed in a sunbeam, totally unaware of being photographed, her beautiful face filled with haunting sadness and her hunched shoulders bowed as if they carried the weight of the world. It was so different to the face she normally let the world see, it made me wonder what was on her mind.

When I handed back the camera to Fiona, she tucked it away, her face pink with pleasure.

‘I think you might just have got yourself a job as official photographer,’ I said. ‘I wonder if we might buy some of them for the campaign.’

‘No, I’ll send them to you.’

‘No,’ interjected Ben, shooting me an unfriendly scowl, ‘You charge for them. They’re bloody good and it’s business. You own the copyright. Don’t let anyone take advantage of you.’

Everyone was diverted by the arrival of the coffee and I gave into temptation and kicked him under the table, not quite as hard as I would have liked to.

I glared at him and said in a low voice ‘I offered to buy them.’

‘Touchy, aren’t we?’ His superior smile wound me up even more.

‘I didn’t like the insinuation that I might take advantage.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’

I rolled my eyes at him. ‘God, you’re like a dog with a bone. Bear a grudge much? When are you going to let it go?’

He grinned like a small boy in the playground, which is exactly how he was bloody behaving.

‘Never?’

‘Guys, what’s everyone having?’ asked Sophie in an overloud voice as the very pretty Danish waitress finally came to take our order.

Sophie waved her fork at me. ‘Kate, this herring is delicious. Do you want to try some? Come on everyone, you’ve got to try something. It’s good for your food education.’

I had a feeling we were going to become well acquainted with that phrase over the next few days.

In the end, spoilt for choice, we’d ordered a selection to share, although Sophie insisted that everyone try the four types of herring despite their reservations.

Like everyone else, I didn’t fancy herring, not being a big fish lover but the expression of eager expectation on Sophie’s face, made me lead the charge and grab a fork to poke at the nearest thing on the plate, a piece of rye and caraway bread with a herring, carrot and ginger mix on top.

‘Wow,’ I said as the flavours hit my tastebuds with a satisfying zing, ‘That’s gorgeous.’ I went back for a second bite, eyeing the concoction with far more enthusiasm. ‘Really,’ I looked around at the others, ‘you should try it.’

Sophie beamed like a proud mama as everyone else, even Avril, took forkfuls from the dishes she’d pushed into the middle of the table.

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