There, amid the buzz of conversation, she was welcomed with a warm smile and a glass of ice-cold white wine. The evening was off to a promising start.
She had just finished saying that she would be going to Berlin with her brother on the following weekend. That they made the trip once a year, and they’d be staying close to the Zoo.
Then her cell phone rang. “Uffe was really upset,” the home help told her.
For a moment Merete sat motionless, her eyes closed, swallowing the bitter pill of what she’d just heard. It wasn’t often that she allowed herself to go out on a date. Why did he have to ruin things?
In spite of the slippery roads she made it home in less than an hour.
Uffe had been shaking and crying almost all evening. That’s what happened occasionally if Merete didn’t come home at the usual time. Uffe didn’t communicate in words, so it could be difficult to decipher what was going on with him. Sometimes it even felt like nobody was there, inside his body. But that wasn’t true at all. Uffe was very much present.
Unfortunately, the home help was clearly distressed. Merete knew she wouldn’t be able to count on her again.
Not until Merete persuaded Uffe to come upstairs to the bedroom and put on his beloved baseball cap did he stop crying, but he was still upset. His eyes looked worried. She tried to calm him down further by describing all the people in the restaurant and the peculiar stuffed animals mounted on the walls. She recounted everything she’d done and thought during the day, and she could see how her words began to soothe him. It was what she had always done in similar situations, ever since he was ten or eleven. Whenever Uffe cried, the sobs came from deep in his subconscious. At those moments, the past and the present became linked inside Uffe. As if he remembered his life before the accident, back when he was a perfectly normal boy. No, that wasn’t right. Not normal. Back then he was an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind filled with fabulous ideas, and excellent prospects for the future. He’d been an amazing boy. And then came the accident.
For the next couple of days Merete was tremendously busy. And even though her thoughts had a tendency to drift away much of the time, there was no one else who could do her work for her. She arrived at the office at six each morning, and after a hard day she would race along the highway to make it home by six in the evening. Not much time to sort everything out.
So it did nothing to improve her concentration when she found a big bouquet of flowers on her desk.
Her secretary was obviously annoyed. She came from the Danish Association of Lawyers and Economists, where people were evidently much better at drawing the line between work and their personal life. If Marianne had still been Merete’s secretary, she would have swooned and hovered around the flowers as if they were the crown jewels.
No, Merete couldn’t expect much support from this new secretary in terms of personal matters, but maybe that was for the best.
The following day she got a valentine telegram from TelegramsOnline. It was the first valentine card she’d ever received in her life, but it didn’t really feel right since it was almost two weeks past February fourteenth. Pictured on the front was a pair of lips and the words “Love & Kisses for Merete.” Her secretary looked indignant when she handed it over.
Inside the telegram it said: “Need to talk to you!”
She sat there for a moment, shaking her head as she stared at the lips.
Then her thoughts shifted back to the evening at the Cafe Bankerat. Even though the memory stirred up a wonderful feeling inside her, she knew this just wasn’t going to work. The only thing to do was to put a stop to the situation before anything really developed.
She spent some time formulating what she wanted to say, then punched in his number and waited for voicemail to pick up.
“Hi, this is Merete,” she said lightly. “I’ve been giving things a lot of thought, but it’s just no good. My work and my brother make too many demands on me, and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. I’m really sorry. Please forgive me!”
Then she picked up her appointment diary from the desk and crossed out his number in the phone section.
At that moment her secretary came in and stopped abruptly in front of the desk.
When Merete lifted her head, she saw the woman smiling in a way that she’d never seen before.
He was standing coatless outside on the steps in the courtyard of the parliament building, waiting. It was bitterly cold, and the color of his face was not healthy. In spite of the greenhouse effect, February weather was not conducive to spending much time outdoors. He gave Merete a pleading look and didn’t see the press photographer who had just come through the gate from the palace square.
She tried to pull him toward the courtyard entrance, but he was too big and too desperate.
“Merete,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t do this. I’m totally devastated.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. She saw the sudden change in his expression. There it was again, that deep, insinuating look in his eyes that made her uneasy.
Behind him the press photographer had raised his camera to his cheek. Damn it. If there was one thing she didn’t need right now it was a tabloid photographer taking their picture.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you!” she shouted and ran toward her car. “It’s just not possible.”
Uffe had looked at her with wonderment when she started to cry as they ate dinner, but it didn’t really affect him. He lifted his spoon as slowly as he always did and smiled every time he swallowed a mouthful. His eyes were fixed on her lips, but he remained far away.
“Damn it!” she sobbed, slamming her fist on the table and looking at Uffe with bitterness and frustration etched deep in her soul. Recently that feeling had begun to come over her more and more often. Unfortunately.
She awoke with the dream burned into her consciousness. So vivid, so cherished, so terrible.
That day had begun with a wonderful morning. A slight frost and a thin layer of snow, just enough to enhance the holiday season atmosphere. They were all so full of life. Merete was sixteen, Uffe thirteen. Her father and mother had spent a night together that made them cast dreamy glances at each other from the moment they loaded the car with packages until the moment it all ended. Christmas Eve morning-what an oddly linked and joyous chain of words that was. So filled with promise. Uffe had talked about getting a compact disc player; it was the last time in his life that he expressed any specific sort of wish.
Then they took off. They were happy, and she and Uffe were laughing. Everyone was expecting them at their destination.
Uffe had given her a shove in the backseat. He was more than forty pounds lighter than his sister, but as pushy as a wild little puppy, diving in among the rest of the litter to suckle. Merete shoved him back, taking off her Peruvian cap to use it to bat him on the head. It was then that things got out of hand.
As the car went around a curve in the woods, Uffe hit her again, and Merete grabbed hold of her brother to force him back onto the seat. He kicked and howled and shrieked with laughter, and Merete pushed him down harder. At that instant, as her father chuckled and reached back his hand to give them both a swat, Merete and Uffe looked up. Their car was in the middle of overtaking another vehicle. The red Ford Sierra right next to them had a gray spattering of salt on its side doors. A man and woman in their forties were sitting in front, staring straight ahead. On the backseat sat a boy and a girl, just like them, and Uffe and Merete smiled at the pair. The boy looked like he was a couple of years younger than Merete; his hair was cut short. He caught her gleeful glance as she knocked her father’s arm aside and she laughed back at him, not noticing her father had lost control of the car until the boy’s expression suddenly changed in the light flickering through the spruce trees. For a second the boy’s terrified blue eyes were riveted on hers, and then he was gone.
The sound of metal grinding against metal coincided with the shattering of the side windows on the other vehicle. The children sitting on the backseat fell over just as Uffe toppled against Merete. Behind her, glass was
