The Last to Disappear by Jo Spain

Author:Jo Spain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Editions Ltd
Published: 2022-04-14T12:39:53+00:00

Koppe

1998

Kaya is deathly, deathly tired, but still she fills the bucket with lichen and walks towards the reindeer enclosure. Miika had to drive all over Lapland yesterday during a blizzard and she knows he, too, is exhausted. He’s been so good to her lately, she wants him to know that she can be good back. That between them, they can make this marriage work.

Last night, while he slept, she sketched him. Even after all these years, it’s the first time she’s drawn her husband. He was sleeping so peacefully. Just this big mound in the bed, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. She’d never watched him in slumber before. Normally, after work, she’d get in the bed beside him, close her eyes and only wake when he was already gone.

Her lover always wanted her to draw him. He would shower her with words of praise and admiration, so eloquent in his flattery and, now she knows, lies. She did draw him, but not with the same love she drew Miika last night. It’s funny, how quickly you realise lust was only ever that.

There was something very intimate about drawing Miika while he was dead to the world. Something so trusting; him lying there, exposed, vulnerable, and her capturing every line of it.

It made her feel protective. Maternal even. This is her family. Miika and their child.

She hasn’t told him about the baby yet. There hasn’t been a chance. He’s either been tired or working. But today, he’s home.

She’ll do his chores and let him sleep. Then, later, she’ll make him his favourite meal, poronkäristys, and pour him some of that nice sweet wine he likes from Germany. It’s always tickled her that her husband likes wine that tastes to her like dessert. Her lover was very different, preferring the tang of ale or the sting of whiskey. Miika loves whiskey, too, but thankfully he hasn’t had too much of it lately. She couldn’t bear it if, just as everything was coming together, he decided to start drinking properly again.

She has no lover to run to, this time.

Kaya shakes her head. She won’t think of that man any more. He had the smallest of chances to redeem himself. If he’d left his wife and come found her, grovelling on his knees, she’d have forgiven him. She might have left Miika for him. But now the die is cast and she hates him, hates having to see him when she’s in work. She wishes he was dead.

Kaya lets herself into the enclosure and begins to scatter the lichen around the ground. Most of the reindeer nuzzle against her legs then get to eating. Except for Pukka, who wants Kaya to feed him from her fingers, the way he likes it.

Kaya giggles as his tongue tickles her hand. She forgets the pregnancy nausea, the tiredness, all her little stresses and worries, as she feels the heat of the animals’ bodies around her, watches their breath snorting into the frozen air and thinks: this is my life, it’s what I want.

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