He loved her apartment. Could he live like this? He’d always dreamed of a house and garden, and had moved out of the city as soon as he could. He’d enjoyed city life, but moving to the suburbs had been the next step in wanting to move on with his life.
It had started to rain again, a light drizzle this time. They sat down at the table by the window and ate their food straight out of the plastic containers, using the chopsticks they had brought from the restaurant.
“Thank you,” he said after a while, reaching across the table to take her hand. “Thank you for sharing everything with me. Your story. And this.”
“Talking about his death and what caused it brings up so many emotions.” She picked up a piece of chicken. “It always makes me think so much, I feel as if I’m processing it all over again. All the whys ... He had two children and a wife, he said he loved us, and I alwaysfeltloved when I was growing up. And we loved him. But our love wasn’t enough.”
Didrik had listened in silence. Now he wanted to say something consoling. “You do know it’s not because your love wasn’t enough. That it was all about how he was feeling,” he said cautiously.
She nodded. “Deep down I get that, but every time it comes up, my mind starts whirling again and I have to remind myself and it’s ...” She sighed. “Fucking hard work.” She put down her chopsticks, put her hands together on the table, and gazed out the window. “After he died, I felt so terrible. There were days when I didn’t want to live, either, because he’d gone. When the grief tore me to pieces, the pain and the sense of loss, I sometimes thought the only possible solution was to do the same thing. Just take my life. But what stopped me was Mom and Hanna—I could never do that to them. Because I love them. Which makes what my dad did even more inexplicable. You don’tdothat to the people you love the most. But that’s exactly what he did to us.”
Didrik stood up, moved to the chair beside her, and pulled her close. She rested her cheek on his shoulder and let herself be held.
“I’m really sorry I behaved so badly the last time we were together,” he said after a while.
“Don’t apologize.”
“I have to. I realize now how emotionally draining it must be for you to process this over and over again. I’m so sorry I went on and on at you.”
“You couldn’t have known. And they say it gets easier every time you go through it all like this, putting your feelings into words.” She raised her head, looked at him. “And I’ve never put it into words like this before, so thank you for making me feel safe enough to ...” Her voice trembled, she swallowed hard. “To take the risk.”
They gazed at each other for a long time, and then he kissed her gently. She kissed him back.
“A cup of tea would be good,” Bente said to him then. “The previous tenant left some behind, and I think I know where the cups are ...”
She made the tea and dug out two cups, then she carried on taking things out of boxes. She hung several small pictures on a wall where there were already nails—motifs from France, Italy, Copenhagen, a small Alpine village. Memories of her travels.
“And ...” She went over to a large leather bag next to the sofa, took out the picture he had given her, and hung it in pride of place.
She moved on to another box and began unpacking books with an air of concentration. “There’s an old one about Bordeaux in here somewhere, I think it’s from the fifties. It might contain old maps or something, pictures of what the area around the address in Médoc looked like back then.”
Didrik nodded and helped her unpack a number of cookbooks and books on wine, which she arranged on the shelves. Many were in French, they were all well thumbed, and in some cases the covers were falling apart.
“Here it is!” Her face lit up and she brandished a volume with a red woven cover.
Didrik’s phone buzzed with a news alert. He was taken aback to see Bente’s name in the headline. What the ...? He clicked on the article.TV sommelier on her grief after losing her father.
He grinned. Typical headline on a slow news day.
“That was quick. You’re topical again.” He showed her the article. She looked shocked, then anxious. Then she read the piece and managed a smile.
“I guess they had nothing more worthwhile to write about.”
He shrugged. “That’s usually what happens.”
They sat down and wrote up a schedule of the places they were going to visit in Bordeaux and the meetings they’d arranged, but he noticed she was a little quiet.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s just ... I’m not used to showing up in the media.”
She shook her head and went to sit on the sofa with the book open on her lap. He joined her and they leafed through the pages together, reading selected passages that looked interesting. After a while Didrik could feel his eyelids growing heavier. It had been a long day. Beside him Bente was yawning too.
“Look at this!” she said suddenly, not a trace of tiredness in her voice now.
He followed her finger across an old map.
“This must be 16 Rue des Templiers, mustn’t it?”
