Looking like the main character in an espionage novel, she went down there dressed in a baseball cap and sunglasses, and with the collar of her coat turned up to hide her face. She paid and apologized once more. Fifteen minutes later the restaurant deleted the post, and Bente let out a sigh of relief. The whole thing had blown over.
However, later that evening when she was recovering on the sofa with the new novel by her favorite writer, Valérie Perrin—Bente liked to read French authors in order to keep up her language skills after having lived there—she received a message from one of her friends.
Have you seen this?
There was a link to a blind item on the entertainment page of one of the tabloid papers.
Female presenter leaves luxury restaurant without paying check
At a Stockholm restaurant, a TV star and her friends consumed food and drink to the value of thousands of kronor. Then they left—without paying.
“This could definitely constitute fraud,” says a lawyer with expertise in this kind of crime.
It all began like a normal restaurant visit. The TV star and her friends arrived at the classic Stockholm venue at about 7:00 p.m.
“I recognized her right away,” says a diner who was there when the group arrived.
According to a guest who sat at an adjoining table, the four women were quiet at first. They started with a bottle of Dom Pérignon 2009 and enjoyed two dozen oysters with the vintage Champagne before ordering the rest of their meal.
“We are of course proud of our entire menu, but this party ordered our most spectacular dishes. French toast with truffle and a 63-degree egg to start, followed by beef tartare on lobster for the main course. They chose to have the beef topped with Kalix caviar, and after studying the dessert menu went for a sorbet made from Italian lemons and specially aged vodka,” says Fredrik Larsson, the restaurant owner.
The check came to 12,326 kronor, excluding tips. At this point in the evening, the party disappeared without anyone paying.
A picture of the check was included, with the captionA vulgar order.
The fact that Bente had since paid was irrelevant; the budding disaster was now a reality.
On top of everything else, the rumors about her alleged infidelity had resurfaced. And in the eyes of the public, the fact that she had previously stood up for restaurant workers, their pay and conditions, and said that everyone should leave a tip of at least 15 percent didn’t help; it simply made her a hypocrite.
The following day an “expert”—it wasn’t clear in what field this person’s expertise actually lay—publicly stated that behaviors such askleptomaniaandinfidelitywere often linked, and that these problems frequently revealed narcissistic tendencies, as in this particular case. Before long the writers were naming Bente in the articles, since everyone knew she was the one being talked about anyway.
Her misstep hadn’t led to any major headlines—she wasn’t that famous. However, the attention was enough to cause the hatred that previously had only seeped out to come gushing forth. Lies now mixed with wild speculation in the comment boxes, and Bente realized that the truth didn’t actually matter to these people. Theywantedher to be a horrible person. In that context, the facts were irrelevant.
She couldn’t stop reading.
Her mother and sister noticed the effect it was having on her, and eventually persuaded her to take a break from the spotlight. TV24 didn’t object.
Even though her mother and sister were standing by, ready to support her, Bente had rented out her apartment, packed two suitcases, and taken the ferry to the island of Gotland and Aunt Lydia—the only member of the family who placed no value whatsoever on Bente’s activities, and who never questioned her ambitions in the world of TV.
Lydia’s husband had left when their son, Uno, was a baby, and mother and child had spent a great deal of time with Bente’s family since then. Bente’s father had later died and her mother had spent some time in jail; during that time, Lydia had been the natural support toBente and Hanna, and over the years, Bente, her mother, Hanna, Lydia, and her cousin Uno had become a close family unit.
By the time of Bente’s crisis, Lydia and Uno lived on Gotland, and moving into her aunt’s house just outside the Visby town wall, being spoiled with Indian teas and home-baked cakes and cookies, and being calledsweethearthad helped enormously.
Bente had stayed with Lydia for almost six months. During that time she had carried on posting her wine tips on YouTube on a weekly basis, even though she was no longer especially popular. A few mean comments slipped through, but eventually people grew tired of the scandal and only a few loyal followers remained.
When Bente returned to Stockholm, she moved in with her sister, Hanna, in the enormous apartment on Maria’s Square. Her sister’s fortune could be compared to a digital version of Scrooge McDuck’s bank vault. Hanna was then already supporting their mother, who had served her jail time and taken early retirement from her accounting work, and was happy to provide Bente with food and somewhere to live while she looked for work as a sommelier.
Eventually, Bente got the job at Rendezvous and, in spite of Hanna’s protests, started to pay rent. Bente gratefully accepted the emotional support, however. Living with her mother and sister, spending time with them every day, reminded her that she was not alone. The break in her TV career had already lasted three years. By now, Bente had accepted the truth.
The world of TV had forgotten all about her.
4
The message from Camille had prompted Bente to read up about Bordeaux, the Second World War, and shipwreck wines. Then she moved on to finding information about wine production in that area during the war years—a topic she was familiar with from her sommelier training, though she needed a refresher and wanted more detail.
She spent half the night and the morning on her research, and before she left for work she recorded a short film about Bordeaux wines, recommending the red she had opened the previous evening and adding to that a bottle of white. Her YouTube videos didn’t get huge traffic, but she loved making them.
After posting the video, she got in the shower, keeping the bottle from the bottom of the sea in her mind the whole time. There was something about it that was impossible to let go. She felt as if she was on the trail of something specific that was fascinating, and the wider theme was interesting on its own.
