wasn’t her type and she wasn’t his, although he would never admit it. I don’t know what he had expected would happen between the two of them, but the upshot was he felt I had stabbed him in the back.
Four days after the party, I could bear it no longer. Line had told me she worked in a health food shop near Norreport station and I decided to go there. I braced myself for every kind of rejection and entered the shop with a feeling of just wanting to get it over with. The shop concept was American. Jars, pots and bags of health remedies filled shelves that lined aisles so close together you could barely squeeze past the other customers. The staff wore green uniforms with a white cap, to make them resemble nurses, I suppose. The shelves were no taller than I could peer over and I quickly established that Line wasn’t there.
The assistant behind the till was a blonde woman in her thirties. A badge gave her name as Alice. She smiled warmly as I approached her, but when I stuttered my question, her expression changed to one of concern. My heart started pounding. All the terrifying scenarios I had imagined in the last few days came back to me in one mad clamour.
Alice told me that Line’s mother had died.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I felt an incredible sense of relief and I believe my lips curved into an inappropriate smile. The shop assistant sent me a baffled look until I got my emotions back under control. This might explain why she was somewhat reluctant to tell me where I could find Line, but eventually I coaxed the surname, Damgaard, out of her and left the shop.
The telephone directory took care of the rest. I knew she lived somewhere in Islands Brygge and luckily there was only one Line Damgaard listed in the area. Now that I knew the reason for her disappearance I was happy and apprehensive at the same time. I debated long and hard with myself about the wisdom of contacting her and I experienced a growing sense of concern that was entirely new to me. It was this feeling that decided the matter. When I cycled to Islands Brygge later the same afternoon, I was motivated more by compassion than infatuation.
Islands Brygge wasn’t as upmarket in those days as it is now. The streets seemed narrow and dingy. It was a part of the city where the weather was always grey and the residents scuttled along the pavements or into their cars to disappear down potholed roads without looking back.
There was an entryphone outside Line’s block, but the door was wide open and I went straight inside the stairwell. Even though it was a sunny day, few rays could penetrate the grimy windows. I switched on the light and saw worn steps and pale green walls that were in dire need of a lick of paint.
Outside Line’s front door I had second thoughts. Should I intrude on her grief? I was about to leave when I heard music coming from her flat. I leaned closer. It was Billie Holiday. I had discovered Blues myself during that period and it was probably the music that decided the matter. I took a deep breath, straightened up and knocked on the door.
A moment passed before I heard the lock click and the door gradually open. There she was, barefoot and wearing a long black dress. Her hair was slightly rumpled and her gaze focused on the floor, but when she raised it, she found mine and I saw that her eyes were red. If she was surprised, she didn’t show it. A small smile formed on her lips and without saying a word, she held out her hand to me. I took it and squeezed it. She held on to my hand and pulled me inside, closed the door and led me into the flat to the sound of Billie Holiday’s hypnotic voice. In the living room was an unmade sofa bed with crumpled sheets; clothing was scattered around it. The record player sat on an upside-down beer crate and LPs filled another crate next to it. Slowly, Line guided me to the bed, still without letting go of my hand, and lay down. I stepped out of my shoes and lay down close to her. Even through my clothes, I could feel the warmth from her body. I put my arms around her, and she pulled the duvet over us both.
I don’t know how long we lay like this. The music soon stopped. Every now and then we slept. Sometimes she cried very quietly; I could feel her body tremble against mine. We didn’t speak. Our communication consisted of small squeezes or light touches. There was nothing sexual about it – we were fully dressed – but I had never experienced anything this intimate before.
‘My mum has died,’ she said after a long time.
‘I know,’ I whispered and stroked her hair.
She turned to me and looked into my eyes. ‘I’ve missed you so much,’ she said. She snuggled up to me and started to sob.
I said nothing, but I held her as tightly as I could.
Line’s mother had died on her way home from work at the Ministry of Religious Affairs where she was a departmental manager. A red Opel smashed into her on a pedestrian crossing and she was thrown high into the air before she hit the ground dead.
Line was at work when it happened. Her elder sister called her at the health food shop. The news of their mother’s death knocked her for six and she left the shop without saying a word. Fearing she would have an accident if she rode her bicycle, she wheeled it through the city. The journey felt endless, but she didn’t cry. Her face didn’t crack until she arrived at her parents’ house on Amager, where her three siblings and her father were waiting for her. There she collapsed and sobbed for hours, incapable of speech.
The feeling of guilt was the worst, she told me. Her grief at her mother’s death was constantly disturbed by thoughts and memories of me and our evening, and she was ashamed to miss me in the midst of the tragedy. This made her feel even more upset. She hated herself for entertaining these feelings when she should be supporting her family and saying goodbye to the most important person in her life. That was why she couldn’t make herself contact me, and if I hadn’t appeared of my own accord, she would probably never have seen me again.
When she opened the door to her flat, I was probably the last person she had expected to see, but the one she wanted to find more than anyone. She accepted this coincidence as evidence of our shared destiny and didn’t hesitate for one second, but pulled me inside.
I had never had any doubts and I still don’t.
Wednesday
6
I LEFT RAGELEJE on Wednesday morning. The sun was shining and there was a mildness in the air that made it hard to leave the cottage during what was likely to be the last sprint before autumn handed over the baton to winter.
My black blazer hung from a hanger on the headrest of the passenger seat. I realized I hadn’t worn it since last year’s book fair when I found my old entry pass and programme in the inside pocket. On the back seat was a weekend bag with clothes for five days and a brown envelope with the beginnings of the first draft of my next book. It was untitled, but my editor had suggested the working title
Before I reached Copenhagen, I pulled into a petrol station and bought a packet of cigarettes. I had quit smoking the first time Line was pregnant, but for some reason I always started again when I was going to Copenhagen, as if the fumes from the city traffic weren’t bad enough or perhaps I believed the cigarettes would cancel out the smog. It was therefore a year since I had last smoked and it resulted in a couple of violent coughing
