“Best for us? We’re a family, you and I.”
“We’re not a family.”
“But we’re going to have children. Please, please stay.” Suddenly something struck him. “Is that the problem?”
“What?”
“The fact that we haven’t had children? But it’ll sort itself out, we’re going to start the process of figuring out ...”
“It’s not that.”
“I mean, we’ve discussed adoption and ...”
“It’s not that.”
He took a few steps toward her, felt desperation clawing at him. “What can I do? Do you want me to change? I’ll give up the television, go back to the university.” He took her hand. She didn’t pull away, and he smiled at her. “Then everything will be like it was before. The way our life used to be.”
“It’s not that,” she said yet again, her voice harder now. She shook her head, withdrew her hand. Stepped back and looked him in the eye. “I’ve met someone else.” Even though she was speaking quietly, her words sliced through the silence of the street. A man passing by with his dog glanced at them, then looked straight ahead and walked a little faster.
Didrik remained motionless for a few seconds, trying to take in what she had said. “Are you serious?”
She didn’t say anything. Of course she was serious. She turned and walked away, heading for the bus stop.
Didrik felt his world collapsing around him. The love of his life was leaving him for another man, and he couldn’t change that, couldn’t change the situation, couldn’t changehimself.
All he could do was stand in front of their house, where the outdoor lighting cast a warm, deceptive glow in the cold blue light of the gloomy spring evening, and watch as Lovisa left him.
7
Bente had received a reply from Elnaz the very next day. She’d thought the idea sounded interesting, and had asked Bente for more information. The problem was that Bente didn’t really have any more information. For that, she’d need to conduct research at the National Archives.
Bente had decided that she would devote her time today to panic-researching the wine bottle so that she would be prepared for her meeting with Elnaz at the production company the following week. She was now sitting with her notebook open in front of her in the silence of the National Archives’ reading room. She had told her mother and sister that she was going to find somewhere quiet to look for a job, because she knew they wouldn’t like the real reason why she had disappeared with the laptop—to conduct research for a TV show.
She went through photocopies of old handwritten documents, hoping to learn more about the people the bottle had been sent to. She looked up the address in Vetlanda and learned that in 1945, when the ship sank, the residents had been a couple with the family name of Steen.
She was able to determine that their grown-up children had moved out—a daughter in 1941 and a son in 1939. He had joined the French Foreign Legion. Bente’s heart began to beat a little faster. Could this be something? Had he sent the bottle home? If he was in the Foreign Legion, it wasn’t impossible. On the other hand, she knew very littleabout the organization or the role it played in France during the Second World War.
Once more she looked at the photograph of the bottle.
Your Dejje
Could the mother have had a secret lover who sent a message from Bordeaux? No—too romantic and not especially realistic. The most likely scenario was that the son was involved somehow. There was no information to suggest that he had moved back home again. She consulted the list once more: His name was Sven Steen. She wrote it down in her notebook.
She opened up her laptop and searched online forSven Steen foreign legionnaire. She found a blog where an ambitious amateur historian had listed every Swede who had been a member of the Legion.
And there it was.
Sven Steen b. 1916
Foreign Legion 1939
Prisoner of war 1944, d. 1944
So he had died in 1944. But surely the bottle had been shipped in 1945? Sven Steen couldn’t have done it. Had someone else sent it after his death?
She made a note of all her thoughts—at least this was better than nothing. A bottle from a shipwreck, with links to a Swede who served in the French Foreign Legion during the Second World War. Who was taken prisoner, then died.
She pulled on her coat and walked out of the building. As she left, twilight was falling, but the evenings were gradually getting longer. She loved this time of year, when it remained light out at the time when she had always gone to work at Rendezvous.
