Chapter Twenty
‘Hi.’ Aksel stood in the hallway, smiling back at her trepidatiously.
‘Aksel!’ she said in surprise, her heart plunging to her feet as she took in the sight of him clutching a bottle of wine, some flowers and a bag of unpopped corn kernels. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘...I decided to be spontaneous for once and see where it would get me.’ He looked back at her awkwardly. ‘I, uh...felt really embarrassed about the other night. That’s why I haven’t called. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh – no, really, it’s fine. I get it,’ she said quickly, feeling his difficulty. ‘We both had way too much to drink.’
‘Yeah...’ He shot her a shy grin. ‘Would you believe me if I told you nothing like that’s ever happened to me before?’
‘Of course!’ she lied. ‘But it didn’t matter anyway. It’s always a much bigger deal to guys than it is to us.’
He shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes. ‘I should have known you’d be okay about it. I know I should have called. I just—’
‘Stop,’ she smiled, desperately trying to reassure him; desperately trying to get off the subject. ‘It was really fine.’
‘Okay, well good then.’
They stared at one another in awkward silence for a moment and she felt her despair grow. The apology was sweet but she was in no mood to socialize. But he had come all the way over here, with gifts, and she couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for him to come here and face her after the disaster on Thursday. ‘...Do you want to come in?’
He looked back at her with relief. ‘I mean, only if you’re free? I wasn’t sure you’d even be in...’
She stepped back for him to come into their small entrance hall, taking his gifts with an appreciative smile. ‘My flatmate’s been away for the weekend so I’ve been enjoying having the place to myself...God, I must look a state,’ she muttered, realizing she hadn’t even looked in a mirror today.
‘No. You look...cosy,’ he said, taking in her bare feet (at least they were pedicured), tartan PJ bottoms and the old, soft blue shirt Lars had left and which she had no intention of returning; she considered keeping it a cheat’s tax he had to pay.
She knew he was being kind. She hadn’t slept, of course, all of yesterday’s well-being exercise undone. She was so tightly strung she couldn’t settle; so wired she couldn’t eat; she was exhausted but couldn’t rest; the apartment had never been so clean. Freja had finally returned her calls with a single text – ‘Sorry! Been busy [winking emoji] Will update you when back’ – and Darcy had spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, wondering how on earth she could make this right.
Her only solution – to extend her overdraft and buy another dress – was an imperfect one. Nothing could be done today, on a Sunday, and the overdraft would take a day or two to arrange, meaning there was no chance of switching the dresses before Freja got back. She would have to come clean about what she’d done and then make it right. It solved 50 per cent of the problem.
It was the other half that was the worst half. The real issue was the breach of trust, and this solution meant Freja would know what she’d done. Darcy had worn her dress without permission; to all intents and purposes, she’d stolen it, taken something precious like it was nothing and destroyed it.
It didn’t help that she had no idea when her flatmate would be back. Tonight? Tomorrow? Rest was impossible, and Darcy’s attention leapt to the door any time there was a sound outside in the hall, as if their neighbours’ comings and goings suddenly carried threat.
‘I’ll open this, shall I?’ She held up the wine bottle with a degree of apprehension. This was either the last thing she needed, or the very thing. Would it distract her from her troubles? Would he?
‘Great.’
‘Would you mind taking off your shoes there?’ she asked over her shoulder as she headed into the open-plan kitchen-living room. ‘Freja’s a bit of a stickler for not bringing outdoor germs through the place. She’s a microbiologist, so she’s pretty hot on that stuff.’
‘Fair enough.’ He followed her in his socks into the sitting room, his gaze wandering over the two blue Ikea sofas positioned opposite one another, the cushions limp and unplumped; the TV playing on mute, the gas log-effect fireplace, nail polish and cotton wool balls on the coffee table. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’
She reached for the wine glasses in the wall cupboard. ‘We like it. It’s warm, which is the main thing. And there’s always hot water.’
‘Crucial. We had a mains leak a few months back and they turned off the supply for three weeks. Had to use bottled water for showers, brushing teeth, filling the kettle. It was a nightmare.’
‘I can imagine,’ she said, turning the oven on to preheat and tipping the popcorn into a covered pan.
‘How long have you lived here?’
She unscrewed the cap and poured the wine, all the while wondering whether or not it would be an advantage to have him here if Freja did return tonight and found the dress was no longer hanging on her wardrobe door. (It was hidden at the back of Darcy’s closet. She couldn’t even bear to look at it.) Would it stop her from screaming, throwing Freja out? ‘Um...since August.’
‘Nice.’
She came over with the wine. ‘Shall we sit soft...?’
‘Great.’ He was still nervous, she could tell.
They settled down on the sofa together, sitting close but not touching. Darcy tucked her legs up and angled herself to face him. Behind her, the TV still played on mute.
‘Well, cheers,’ he said, holding up his glass.
‘Cheers.’
The silence in the room resounded as they both took a deep gulp of wine.
‘So, have you had a good week?’ she asked him, resting her glass on her thigh. The question sounded stiff, as if they’d just met.
‘You mean, apart from feeling like a prize idiot for fumbling—’
‘Aksel,’ she chided. ‘Forget about it.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘It was decent, I guess. Although we had the dog back in – you know, the one who suffered the makeshift castration at the hands of his owner?’
‘He tied the elastic bands...?’
‘Exactly. Well, he died. The infection took hold and we couldn’t get it under control.’
‘Oh no, that’s so sad!’
‘I know. The guy was trying to save himself some money and all he did was cause suffering to that poor animal and end up losing his beloved pet.’
‘I don’t know how you don’t shout at these people,’ she muttered. ‘They’re idiots.’
‘Verbally abusing the clients is frowned upon, unfortunately, though some of them definitely deserve it.’ He looked back at her. ‘You?’
‘Mm, I’ve had better weeks.’
‘How’s it going with the mystery woman?’
‘She’s becoming slowly less mysterious.’
‘Yeah? Tell me,’ he said, taking another deep glug of his wine; almost half the glass.
Darcy sighed, weary. Did he really want to know? ‘Well, I know now that she went to live with the Madsens from 1915, so I’ve been doing a deep dive through the family’s photographs and diaries, which is at least giving me some insight into her teenage years with them.’ To her ongoing frustration, there was no sign Lilja had kept a diary herself. It was Lotte, as her best friend and companion, who was proving to be the best source of information on her movements and whereabouts.
Darcy looked at Aksel thoughtfully. ‘Actually, you might be able to shed some light on something for me.’
‘Again?’ he smiled. ‘I’m going to start billing for consultancy.’
She laughed, although she wasn’t actually sure he was joking. ‘So it appears my mystery woman had a baby boy in August 1919, and there are a lot of medical bills pre-and post-partum. They seemed to be getting through huge quantities of potassium bromide...What would that be for?’
‘Well, that was the standard protocol for treating epilepsy back then.’
‘Really?’ she asked interestedly.
‘Yes. It had other applications too, of course. You’ve probably heard the British Army famously gave their troops bromide tea to calm sexual excitement on the front line? Everyone knows about that.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘But it was the principal treatment for epilepsy till the 1910s, 1920s. We still use it now to treat epilepsy in dogs.’
‘Right,’ she murmured, thinking hard.
‘Didn’t you say she drowned? Perhaps that’s how it happened? She had a seizure in the bath?’
‘No, it wasn’t her who was epileptic.’ Darcy shook her head. ‘I think it was the baby.’
Aksel winced. ‘Ah.’
‘Yeah, seems it was pretty bad. There were all these prescriptions that started after the birth and suddenly stopped at exactly the same time the baby died, at seven months old.’
‘How sad.’
‘I think it was devastating for her. The birth seems to have been traumatic anyway. I saw something in one of the entries referring to eclampsia.’
‘Oh, well, that explains it. Eclampsia is very dangerous. Leads to all sorts of complications for mother and baby. She likely went into premature labour...Sounds like she was lucky to survive.’ He took another sip of his wine.
‘I’m not sure if lucky is a word I’d apply to her, sadly,’ Darcy frowned. ‘So why do some women get it and others don’t?’
‘Eclampsia?’ He shrugged. ‘There are a number of risk factors – diabetes, obesity, twin pregnancies, age—’
‘Age?’
‘Yes, if you’re sitting at the extremes for child-bearing years, it’s more likely.’
‘Such as? What’s the range?’
He considered. ‘Younger than seventeen. Older than thirty-five—’
‘She would have been very young. I don’t know her exact age, but going by photographs at the time and her being a contemporary of Lotte, I’m estimating that she was about fourteen.’
Aksel winced again. ‘Mm. Adolescent pregnancies can be high risk. Depending on the individual, the body just isn’t ready and may not be fully developed. The pelvis can be too small...Pregnancy is a massive strain on all the organs and systems and effectively a child’s body can’t cope with it.’
Darcy sat back, seeing how one event had triggered a chain of disasters, each connecting to another: adolescent pregnancy. Eclampsia. Epilepsy.
A baby dead because it had been born too soon, to a mother too young.
She sighed, dropping her head as she tried to remember Viggo’s calm perspective on Lilja as a child bride: Different times, Darcy .
But it still made her angry.
Beside her, Aksel finished his drink and shifted position. ‘Just to change the subject quickly – what are you doing on Friday night?’
She tried to think. ‘No plans yet, I don’t think. Why?’
‘You know it’s St Lucia’s Day?’
‘Oh. No, I didn’t know.’
‘Yeah, it’s a pretty big deal. There’ll be processions all over the country, except here – in the city – we do it a little differently.’
‘How?’
‘The procession’s on water. Everyone goes out on kayaks. We start at Nyhavn, sing some carols, have some food and drink, paddle round to the next stop, do the same. Rinse and repeat. There’s always a huge crowd – both on the water and on the banks, but it’s more fun on the water. Fancy being my date?’
‘I’ve really not kayaked that much.’
‘You don’t need much experience. It’s in the canals, so there are no tides or currents.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘Very – it’s well lit and there are security marshals everywhere. If you went in or under, I guarantee you’d be hauled back out in seconds.’
‘Chilly, though.’
‘I’ll keep you warm,’ he said flirtatiously, reaching out a hand and covering hers. ‘Plus, we’d hire you a wetsuit as well as the kayak.’
She was already anticipating that invoice.
‘What do you say? Are you in?’
She swallowed nervously. ‘...Okay sure, why not?’ She had nothing else on her horizon to which to look forward.
He beamed. ‘Great! You’ll love it. I know you will.’ He grabbed her hand and held onto it and she saw his stare deepening, the mood between them changing.
He leaned over and kissed her lightly, once, twice...She closed her eyes, not stopping him but not falling into it either. She wasn’t sure how she felt, stuck in her head and not her body. She was hardly an innocent, but this just didn’t feel like the right time. But how could she tell him that when the ghost of the other night still lingered? She sensed they were only going to get past it by overwriting it. His ego needed to settle this doubt once and for all. The kiss grew deeper, his enthusiasm – and wine-fuelled confidence – surging as he began to take control. He broke away to take the wine glasses out of their hands and Darcy watched dully as he set them down on the table. He resumed kissing her again, both hands now free and beginning to wander, pulling her closer to him.
The kiss was good but her mind was fractured on other things and when he began unbuttoning her shirt, finding her braless underneath, she didn’t feel the same quickening of lust but simply a nervous flicker that she was going to have to do this sober.
He pulled back to remove his hoodie, the t-shirt coming off with it, although whether that was intentional or not, she wasn’t sure. ‘So hot suddenly,’ he grinned, suddenly half naked in her living room.
He began kissing her neck, pushing her back on the cushions – but the sudden sound of small explosions made them both start. They looked up like meerkats, trying to identify the noise.
‘Oh! The popcorn!’ she remembered, trying not to sound too grateful for the distraction. ‘I’d better take it out before it burns!’ She slid out from under him and walked over to the oven. She put on the oven gloves and lifted the pan out. Inside, the corn kernels were popping as wildly as her nerves.
‘...Do you want me to get that?’
She looked up to find Aksel pouring himself another glass and nodding his head towards the front door. ‘Huh?’
‘Someone just knocked.’
They had? Oh God!
She froze, the pan held between her gloved hands. Freja was back and this was going to happen way sooner than she had anticipated. This was it.
She felt panic shoot through her veins again as she looked back towards the bedrooms. Should she just come straight out with the dress and explain? Wouldn’t it be worse to have Freja go in and start looking for it...?
‘Darcy?’
She looked back at him, still motionless. ‘Uh, yeah...yeah, if you wouldn’t mind. It’ll be my flatmate, Freja...She’s always losing her key.’ That wasn’t quite true. She’d lost it once.
‘Ha. I do that too,’ he said, getting up from the sofa, glass in hand, and disappearing out of sight into the stubby little reception hall. ‘Hi...’
Darcy waited, eyes closed, for the sound of her flatmate’s surprise on being greeted at her own door by a handsome, but shirtless, stranger.
But it wasn’t Freja she heard. ‘...Hi,’ she heard Aksel say in a questioning tone.
‘Aksel? Who is it?’ she asked, putting the pan down on the trivet and hurrying over. She rounded the corner, her oven gloves still on—
‘...Max?’ The word was little more than a breath, like it had been knocked out of her.
Aksel was holding up a long clothing bag. It was white with a familiar black font. Valentino . He turned back to her with a bemused expression. ‘Apparently this is for you?’
But Darcy didn’t look at what he was holding out for her. She couldn’t take her eyes off Max. She couldn’t comprehend what she was seeing, even though it was also, somehow, perfectly obvious.
Max stared back at her with that distant, shellacked look she was beginning to know well and it was obvious from the scene before him – her hair dishevelled, shirt unbuttoned; Aksel topless at the door – that he perfectly understood what he was seeing too.
In that one moment, she felt the intimacy that had bloomed between them for a few brief moments last night, close up again; tenderness balled up within a fist. The memory of what he had done for her, rescuing her from public humiliation, had sat inside her like a hot coal, refusing to cool. Try as she might to hate him, he kept shape-shifting, inciting her lust, sympathy, gratitude...
‘But...how did you...?’ she faltered. She couldn’t understand how it was possible that he was here at her door, much less why he should have done this for her. Too many questions clamoured to her throat but she knew anything she said would be inadequate, ungracious. Aksel’s presence complicated things; they had an audience and she couldn’t speak freely.
‘Don’t make a thing about it. I just made a call.’ Max’s voice was clipped and toneless.
‘I...I must pay you back,’ she said, trying to say something, anything, that could convey her relief. He had saved her!
‘No need. It was a gift.’
Her mouth parted. She couldn’t accept a five-thousand-euro dress as a gift!
‘Uh...what’s going on?’ Aksel asked, looking confused, looking between them, his gaze coming to rest upon her.
It felt like minutes before Darcy could bring her attention onto him. She was trying to work out how Max even had her address, but of course Christoff had dropped her back here last night. Slowly, she dragged her eyes onto her guest; the man whose hand had been on her bare breast just a few moments ago but couldn’t touch her soul. ‘...I, uh, spilled wine on a dress I was wearing to a work event last night. Except the dress wasn’t mine...Max is saving my skin.’
‘That’s very nice of him,’ Aksel said with a wary note.
The two men’s eyes locked for a moment in silent communication before Max’s slid back to her again. ‘It was nothing to do with me. My girlfriend has a contact there. She gets given dresses all the time. I’m just the messenger...’
‘Right. Wow,’ Aksel nodded, leaning against the doorframe with a familiarity that suggested he was here all the time.
Max stiffened ever so slightly. Almost imperceptibly, but Darcy clocked it. ‘Anyway, I should go,’ he muttered.
He turned to leave and Darcy felt alarm leap through her at how all of this was unfolding – her stilted response in front of Aksel. But she couldn’t say anything that would make Max stay. She couldn’t thank him for what she knew had to have been a giant effort on his part, no matter what he said to the contrary, to get this dress here to her. She didn’t believe that the dress had been given for free. She didn’t believe it hadn’t been a problem. Even if Veronique – or Angelina, or Natalia – were house models there, even if they closed the couture shows, it was still a Sunday. How had he got it?
She bitterly wished now that she hadn’t hung back all day from texting him to thank him for getting her home last night without further indignity. Every time she had picked up her phone to call, she had put it back down again, telling herself he had been kind in a crisis but that crisis had passed now and her problems weren’t his. They weren’t friends, even though he’d helped her.
Was still helping – even though he was looking at her now like he barely recalled her name. He hadn’t smiled once. Every thank-you was rebuffed. They could never connect; only their punches landed.
And yet, she remembered the steadying beat of his heart against her ear and how his eyes had closed as he kissed her hair.
No hello. No goodbye.
And yet...