A Swedish Christmas Fairy Tale Read online

  A Swedish Christmas Fairy Tale

  Amanda Radley

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  Contents

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  1. Mission Highly Improbable

  2. London Calling

  3. Making a Deal

  4. An Invitation

  5. Early Morning Thoughts

  6. Business in the Bakery

  7. Getting to Know You

  8. Making Friends

  9. Going Home

  10. A Realisation

  11. Preparing for Sweden

  12. Welcome to the Farm

  13. Can’t Cook, Shouldn’t Cook

  14. Off the Grid

  15. The Beautiful Lake

  16. The Bloody Awful Lake

  17. Introducing… a Swedish Mile

  18. An Accidental Sighting

  19. Shopping

  20. Spiralling

  21. Pizza Fixes Everything

  22. A Quiet Evening In

  23. How Different We Are

  24. Christmas Market

  25. Hugo’s Mistake

  26. A Realisation

  27. Back to Work

  28. To the Rescue

  29. Fired

  30. Restless in London

  31. An Adorable Nightmare

  32. Exploring

  33. Did You Buy an Apron?

  34. At the Library

  35. A Job Offer

  36. A Lot Braver than You Think

  37. Flying Home

  38. Trying to Say Goodbye

  39. Flying Home

  40. Merry Christmas

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  Reviews

  About the Author

  Also by Amanda Radley

  Also by Amanda Radley

  Other Books by A.E. Radley

  1

  Mission Highly Improbable

  Amber Tate impatiently tapped her foot on the carpeted floor of the elevator car. The numbers seemed to be ascending more slowly than ever. She stole another glance at her Tommy Hilfiger bracelet watch. It told her what she already knew: she was late.

  It was only two minutes past nine, which ordinarily wouldn’t be a problem. Except Amber worked for Bronwyn Walker, a certifiable grade-A demon who was looking for any reason to fire her.

  When Amber had accepted the job at Walker Clay Publishing three years ago, she had thought she’d stay with the company for a long time to come. She’d always wanted to work in acquisitions, and becoming the acquisitions manager for the children’s department of a top London publisher was a dream come true.

  For a while, things were wonderful. She loved her job. She was given autonomy to manage her department and her workload as she saw fit.

  Then, one of the managing partners, Jonathan Clay, died unexpectedly, and Bronwyn Walker had taken full control of the company. With that sudden alteration, the entire atmosphere of the company was turned on its head.

  At first, there were small changes like the free coffee machines being removed and the planned renovation of the staff room being cancelled. Soon after, the flexible working program was suspended. Not long after that, half of the marketing department were fired in what was to be the start of a dramatic restructuring and downsizing project.

  Bronwyn Walker had a very specific idea of what she wanted Walker Clay Publishing to be: renowned and highly profitable. According to Bronwyn, that meant weeding out anyone who didn’t feel the same and cutting any expense that might be considered frivolous.

  Such as anything to do with staff welfare.

  Bronwyn was a fearsome force of nature from whom no one was safe. If she felt someone couldn’t do their job to the level she expected, they were out. It was often joked—quietly and morbidly—that the HR department should install a revolving door.

  Amber had already had a few close calls with the axe that was hanging above her head. One came when a newly acquired author started to get cold feet about their contract, another when sales of a newly released children’s book plummeted after an unexpected social media backlash.

  Both times Amber had managed to pull things back together and rescue the situation. And her job.

  In the back of her mind was the knowledge that Bronwyn’s son, Scott, was an acquisitions manager for a rival publisher. It was common knowledge that the mother-and-son duo were just waiting for the right time to bring him over, straight into Amber’s still-warm chair.

  Luckily, that meant Bronwyn couldn’t simply make Amber redundant, as she intended to put someone else in the role. Turning Amber out needed to be done properly; otherwise the situation would lead straight to industrial tribunal. Amber knew her rights and had made it clear to HR that that was the case.

  But that didn’t change the fact that Bronwyn wanted her gone and was itching for a good reason to fire her. She was sure that Bronwyn was keeping a list of small infractions that could be strung together into a convincing argument to get rid of her. Being a couple of minutes late might just be the thing she was looking for. The icing on the cake of small mistakes.

  The elevator finally dragged its way to the twelfth floor. Amber hurried out and into the open-plan office, hoping that she wouldn’t be seen.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be.

  Amber had entered the office a hundred times before without a single person noticing her. But, of course, the day she was a couple of minutes late would be the day Bronwyn would see her arrive.

  Her boss stood outside her corner office speaking with her assistant and immediately saw Amber approaching. Bronwyn tucked her folder under her arm and slowly clapped. The sound echoed around the quiet office, causing others to look up.

  “Well done, Miss Tate. You’ve finally made it.” Bronwyn looked at her watch. “I don’t know which time zone you were aiming for, but clearly not this one. My office. Now.”

  Amber tossed her bag under her desk and threw her coat and scarf onto the back of her chair. She took an extra second to look down and check that her outfit looked reasonably presentable despite her hurried rush through the city.

  Realising she had little time to do anything about her appearance, and, knowing that a longer delay would just irritate Bronwyn further, she hurried into the office.

  “Close the door,” Bronwyn said the moment Amber entered.

  Amber closed the door and quickly took the seat in front of the large desk, which overflowed with paperwork. Bronwyn was looking at her laptop screen and typing. It was a typical Bronwyn Walker power play, making Amber wait.

  After a few tense moments, Bronwyn stopped typing and slowly turned to look at her. “I trust we won’t have a repeat performance of your late arrival?” she asked.

  Amber shook her head. “No.”

  She knew better than to explain why she was late. Bronwyn didn’t care, she just wanted a promise that it wouldn’t happen again before getting on with the day. Coming up with excuses was an invitation to ignite Bronwyn’s temper, which was the very last thing Amber wanted to do. Sitting so close to Bronwyn’s office over the years had been an education in how quickly the woman could turn from a normal human being into an unreasonable, screaming monster.

  “Good. I have a job for
you. You’ve heard of Charlotte Lund, of course.”

  Amber’s brain raced to catch up. Bronwyn dropped names all over the place, expecting people to know who they were with no explanation. A displeased glare was the reward for anyone not fast enough to catch onto her trail of thought.

  Lund… Charlotte Lund… she thought to herself. Sounds foreign, maybe?

  A glimmer of recognition twinkled in the dark recesses of her mind. She hoped she was correct as the memory started to surface.

  “Yes,” Amber said with confidence she didn’t feel. “The fairy-tale author.”

  “The rights for the English-language versions are due to expire,” Bronwyn continued seamlessly. “The collection has not been touched for years, and I think they are due for a relaunch—new artwork, new marketing, the works. Obviously, there’s a lot of potential with there being so many short stories to work with. I’m seeing a central collection of all tales, a number of box sets, and the individuals, too. Lots of product to work with.”

  Amber breathed a tiny sigh of relief that she’d been right. She thanked whatever part of her brain that hung onto nuggets of information that could be considered useless. If she recalled correctly, Charlotte Lund was a Swedish author of children’s fairy tales. She’d been born around the turn of the 1900s and had published a number of stories throughout the thirties and forties. They’d been hugely well liked around that time and for a couple more decades before slowly fading in popularity. In the UK market, at least.

  “The rights are held by Emilia Lund, Charlotte Lund’s granddaughter. Obviously, she lives in Sweden. I want you to get in touch with her and get us the rights to reprint. We need those books to be turning a profit, and to do that we need to bring them up to date. We need to make the stories relevant to children today. Maybe an app? Certainly a website, maybe some games. You know what kind of thing I mean. But to start, we need to get the rights signed off. I want you to get the contract signed and get me a plan to squeeze as much as possible out of the franchise within the next two weeks.”

  Two weeks took them right up to Christmas Day, but Amber wasn’t going to mention that. She didn’t think that Bronwyn ever stopped working. She wouldn’t be surprised if Bronwyn wrapped Walker Clay published books from the store cupboard for her family at Christmas. Or, more likely, had her assistant do so.

  “I’ve sent you the details of the Swedish publisher,” Bronwyn said. “It seems Emilia is a bit of a recluse, but I’m sure you’ll figure all the details out. Two weeks.”

  It was a clear dismissal. Amber jumped to her feet.

  “Not a problem. I’ll get a plan to you as soon as possible.”

  “See that you do,” Bronwyn said, having to get the last word in.

  Amber left the room, closing the door behind her. The office staff had an unspoken rule that if it was possible to contain Bronwyn to her office then it should be done so at all costs. Not that it stopped her, she’d gleefully shout through the glass door. But the impression of a safety shield between the older woman’s blistering temper and the innocent souls who inhabited the space outside was appreciated by all.

  Amber walked back to her desk and flopped into her chair. A meeting with Bronwyn was no way to start the day, although she’d had many worse meetings with her.

  “What did the dragon want?” Tom asked from the desk opposite hers.

  Tom worked in non-fiction acquisition and somehow managed to keep out of the line of fire. Probably something to do with his cheeky little smile and habit of complimenting Bronwyn on her questionable ideas.

  “She wants to get the rights to some old fairy tales.” Amber booted up her computer.

  “Oh, the Charlotte Lund thing?”

  Her eyes snapped up. “How do you know about that?”

  It wasn’t anything to do with Tom’s area of expertise, so the fact he’d heard about it was bad news.

  “Peter in major accounts was on the case for a couple of months, until he was let go,” Tom explained, confirming her suspicions.

  “Fired, Tom. Call it what it was,” she told him.

  Tom shrugged, not caring about anyone else’s fate as long as he was safe and secure in his boring job that no one really understood or cared about. Tom rarely had enough work to fill his days but had perfected the art of looking busy. That and the endless sucking-up to Bronwyn meant that he was safe from the firing line for a while longer.

  “What happened?” Amber asked.

  The fact that the project had been with major accounts before being reassigned to Amber wasn’t a good sign. Bronwyn wasn’t in the habit of explaining herself, so Amber was left to pick up scraps of gossip to find out why Peter had been working on the project with seemingly nothing to show for it.

  “Well, I heard that the woman who owns the rights, the granddaughter, is completely off the grid. No phone, no internet. Lives out in the sticks on her own. She has an agent, but he refuses to do anything without her approval, and no one can talk to her so that’s not going to happen.” Tom swiped a pen off his desk and used it to gesture to Amber. “Might as well get packing.”

  Amber glared at him. He delighted in making jokes about who was next to find themselves unemployed. He had as much empathy as the pen he waved in her face.

  He chuckled and went back to work. She pulled her chair closer to her computer and eagerly waited for it to finish booting up so she could get to her emails and start on what now seemed an impossible task.

  “Oh, I think Peter left a copy of the Lund collection, all the fairy tales, in the stationery cupboard. Unless someone’s nicked them,” Tom added.

  Amber flew to her feet and marched across the office to the large cupboard. Since things had been going to hell at Walker Clay, so had people’s ethics. If it wasn’t nailed down, it usually went missing within a couple of days.

  As she went, Amber considered that it would be an interesting science experiment to monitor people’s moral downfall when their livelihoods were suddenly in the hands of a madwoman. Interesting if it wasn’t real life and so desperately depressing.

  She opened the door and walked into the room. The formerly neat shelves looked like they had been ransacked during a zombie apocalypse, the result of Sarah, the former office junior, having been made redundant.

  Amber lifted up half-empty boxes and old marketing posters as she searched the cupboard. Right at the back, in a darkened corner, she saw an archive box with the lid not quite on properly. She pulled the box out. Around fifty or sixty beautifully designed children’s books were lined up neatly in the box, the spines all baring the name Charlotte Lund.

  Amber was relieved they were still there, though she knew it was presumably only because of the weight of the box. She replaced the lid and took the collection back to the relative safety of her desk.

  2

  London Calling

  Amber squinted at her monitor as she read the tiny writing from the scanned documents. It had been a while since Walker Clay had done anything meaningful with the Lund collection.

  They’d sold very well in the seventies and eighties, both as individual stories and in a large, decorative box set. But Walker Clay had done nothing further with the collection, and so it soon fell out of favour with the buying public.

  She picked up one of the books on her desk and had a look at the thin, square hardback. The cover and design were dated but beautiful. It was obviously Scandinavian in design and felt like it had come from the turn of the last century rather than from the thirties. The simple illustrations were sparsely decorated in a watercolour style that she knew wouldn’t appeal to the readers of today.

  She checked out Lund’s sales figures around the world. Copies were selling everywhere except the UK, where Walker Clay had stopped pushing them. Though, she could see why. The British market wasn’t one for nostalgia. New and exciting were the order of the day. Where some countries were happy to make do and mend, Britain had lost that mentality soon after the hardships of the War. Vast consumeris
m had taken over the country in the 1970s, and the movement had grown stronger with each passing decade.

  Cute books that looked like they belonged on your great-grandmother’s shelf were not in. And people wanted things that were in.

  She opened the book and flipped through the pages. Like a few of the others she had looked at, it seemed that the translation was off in a few places. Some of the words didn’t seem quite right, and the occasional sentence didn’t exactly make sense. Something that would never have happened these days.

  Her phone rang. She looked up and saw a long number of the screen, denoting an incoming international call.

  “Amber Tate,” she answered.

  “Hello, this is Stine Persson, you emailed our office about the Charlotte Lund collection?”

  Amber detected only a slight accent and breathed a sigh of relief that Stine’s English was so good. Often when dealing with translation rights she had found herself trying to have a conversation with someone who spoke no English whatsoever. It was always a gamble when taking on these kinds of projects.

  “I did, yes! Thank you so much for calling me back. I understand that you hold the rights for the original Charlotte Lund collection?”