All I Want for Christmas

Chapter Twenty-Five

He gave her the tour, the house breathing quietly as they walked through its rooms in socked feet. It felt completely different to his townhouse. That was all moody colours and striking statement pieces but this felt gentler and less self-consciously beautiful. It had the air of inheritance to it, an old soul that had seen much, the worn comfort of a jumper he’d pinched from his father: the fireplaces had coloured tiles, there were finger-wide gaps between the floorboards and some of the sofas needed patching. The curtains in some rooms looked so old, the patterns had been sun-bleached so that only faint shadows remained.

The paintings were different here, too. Fewer large-scale extravagant oils and instead, galleries of quieter, humbler sketches and watercolours. Darcy stopped before a grouping on the stairs. They were botanicals – larkspur, lavender, daffodils. ‘L. Madsen,’ she said, reading the artist’s signature in the corner. She looked up at him on the steps above her but he shook his head, knowing what she was thinking.

‘Lotte.’

‘Oh.’ She wondered how he could be so sure.

She followed him up the stairs. He seemed different here, too; the more he moved into the private areas of the house, it was as if his hard edges were knocked off. He stopped outside a bedroom, his arms folding over his chest, and she somehow knew this had been his brother’s room. Exposed timbers striped the ceiling; the walls were air force blue, with ticking curtains and old pine furniture. Any artefacts from their childhood had been, seemingly, long since packed away, but there were some photographs on the surfaces, some school sports photos on the walls.

‘Peder’s?’ she asked.

‘This was his,’ he nodded. ‘...All of it.’

She looked at him, picking up his meaning. ‘...The house?’

‘The bulk of the Madsen fortune passed out, a couple of generations back, to our cousins – Frederik’s side. This place was slim pickings compared to what they inherited, but this was all we would have wanted anyway,’ he shrugged. ‘We always loved it here. Our grandmother and father both grew up here, and we spent our summers here until our parents died.’ A small spasm flickered in his jaw. ‘We got sent to live with our aunt, inherited some shares in the company and some honorary positions. I inherited the townhouse and Peder got this...’

His voice trailed off and she knew what he was thinking: that he never should have had both. It wasn’t supposed to have been this way.

She felt his aloneness radiating from him. He had lost everyone he loved. His entire family. She couldn’t begin to imagine how that must feel. She may not see her family on a daily basis but they always messaged and shared memes, laughing, joking and teasing as if they were in the same room. The thought of having no one in the world to care about her, to check in on her...‘Max, I’m so sorry.’

He glanced at her, but it was as if the emotion in her voice was threatening to him – a knife glinting at his throat – and she saw that inscrutable gaze blink back at her. It was like a mask he could slip behind, keeping the world at bay. He had already come close to revealing too much at lunch, but instead of drawing them closer, every slip now only seemed to push him further away from her.

She swallowed, recognizing the pattern. He would never let her in. He didn’t want an emotional connection with her, or anyone.

He turned and carried on down the hall, his back to her, pointing out the bedrooms. Darcy trailed after him. The ceilings were reasonably high but they sloped sharply in the gables, making the rooms feel cosier. The views onto the garden were far-reaching as the lawns fell gently away and the sea was visible above the treetops from some of the rooms on the west side. All the beds were pristine, every sheet wrinkle smoothed out as if it was a White Company catalogue. It looked like no one had ever touched them, much less slept in them.

She supposed most of the bedrooms – if not all but his – were now guest rooms. And yet the small table in the big kitchen suggested he didn’t entertain on any large scale here.

‘When was this taken?’ she asked, stopping in front of a pair of large photographs on the wall. Both looked to be weddings held here at the estate, bride and groom surrounded by family, just outside the kitchen doors; one photograph, the older one, was black and white, but the other was in colour and for the first time, she understood what Viggo had been telling her about the Sallys’ talents. In contrast to the starkness outside right now, the garden was a profusion of textures, a riot of colour. It made her want to walk through the grasses, run her hands against the heavy flowerheads...

‘Those are my parents’ and grandparents’ weddings. It was a bit of a tradition getting married here back then.’

‘I can see why,’ she murmured. ‘It’s heavenly here.’

He didn’t reply. It didn’t need to be spelled out why there had been no weddings since.

They came to a room at the end of the corridor. It was smaller than the others, with a window set in the back wall that looked down the drive towards the clumps of silver birches and the beach beyond. There was an iron bedstead, a faded flat-weave rug, a small desk. And in the nearside corner was a large easel, grubby with paint marks.

‘This was Johan Trier’s room, when he stayed here,’ Max said, looking in dispassionately. ‘Out of all the rooms, it’s probably the one that’s been touched least. I suppose we were always too aware of the importance of the connection with him to dare doing much in here.’

Darcy felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. ‘You mean, this is where he stayed while he was painting Her Children ?’

He nodded.

‘And you didn’t think that would be of interest to me?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s just an old bedroom.’

Was it though? She paused for a moment, realizing, for the first time, that the connection between Trier and the Madsens really was something more than just an academic fact or commercial advantage. Johan Trier had slept in that bed; he had woken in this room...He had created the greatest work of his lifetime, and of Denmark’s past century, while staying right here. Suddenly Max’s argument that Her Children belonged at the Madsen Collection didn’t just feel like legal jousting or good PR prior to a public listing. He might actually have a point.

She felt a green shoot of hope break through the frozen ground. The past was stirring...

‘Which was Lilja’s room, do you know?’ she asked, looking back down the hallway.

‘We’re not quite sure, but we think probably Peder’s. It was the smallest, and as Casper was the younger brother too...’ His jaw pulsed, as if he was pained by the logic of the younger brothers always receiving less. Smaller room. Smaller real estate.

Darcy tried to imagine Lilja sleeping down the hall, her new baby in the cot beside her...August 1922. She had been living here for two years by then; what had been a temporary suggestion to recuperate from her bereavement had gradually become a new life. She had recovered here and never gone back to the city. Her husband – working in London – and in-laws had been infrequent visitors; so how had she felt about having a newcomer – a brilliant, famous artist – sleeping down the hall? Had it been an intrusion? Or a welcome return to wider life?

‘Were there staff?’

‘Yes, the Saalbachs. Mrs Sally, as she was known, was our cook and housekeeper, and her husband and son, Ernest and Arne, were the gardeners-slash-drivers.’

‘Old Sally and Little Sally. Viggo’s mentioned them.’

‘That’s right. Although Little Sally was six foot three, so that was something of a misnomer.’

‘And where did they sleep?’ she asked, counting that there were five bedrooms up here.

‘There used to be a small staff lodge house, where the garage now stands.’

‘Ah.’ So not in the main house, then. ‘And did Trier have a studio here?’

‘Yes, also long since gone. It was more of a glass lean-to at the back of the house. It was supposed to give him lots of natural light but it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.’

She looked back in at Trier’s bedroom again. ‘May I?’

‘Sure.’

She stepped in, looking around carefully and trying to observe her own reactions to what she saw and felt. It felt as if she was trying to inhale the past – as if Trier had left something of himself behind in here that she could capture. She was looking for something, but she didn’t know what.

There was another old photograph on the wall. This one was sepia-toned and mottled with dust mites trapped between the paper and the glass, so that small dark patches bloomed in several areas. But she knew immediately who she was looking at. Johan Trier was standing by his easel. He was as recognizable by his long, pointed beard as by his painter’s smock, a paintbrush held upright in his hand like Cruella de Vil’s cigarette holder.

To his left stood a man in a pale suit and tie. He had an imperious look about him, with a neatly trimmed beard and his chin up as he gazed straight towards the camera. His hand rested on the shoulder of a young woman beside him. She was holding a baby wrapped in a blanket and was barefoot, her dark hair worn in a braid. To the right of the easel stood another two men – one middle-aged, the other young; unlike the bearded fashion of the day for gentlemen of the upper classes, they were clean-shaven and their clothes cut from hemp. Slightly in front of them stood a middle-aged woman in a dark dress and pristine apron, her hands clasped before her.

‘That’s the Sallys,’ Max said, as Darcy peered at the image. ‘Johan, obviously...And as you’ll no doubt recognize, my great-grandparents, Casper and Lilja. She’s holding my grandmother there.’

She was also wearing the necklace. It was a clean, clear image and Darcy took a good look. There was no longer any doubt at all that the necklace was Lilja’s, nor that it was her in the painting. Her head was tipped at the same angle – chin sightly down, lips parted, gaze up.

‘What did you say was your grandmother’s name?’ she asked, her gaze settling on the baby bundled in Lilja’s arms. Two births.

‘Emme.’

‘Emme,’ she murmured. ‘That’s pretty.’

‘This was taken in August 1922. They were all living here that summer.’

‘All of them? Casper, Lilja and Johan?...That must have been intense.’

‘Why?’ His voice was immediately defensive.

‘An artist in the midst of greatness – and a newborn? How thick are the walls in this house?’

He conceded the point. ‘Not thick enough.’

Had there been arguments? she wondered, looking again at Casper and Lilja; they stood stiffly, as if carved from wood. By this point, Casper had been in London heading up the family office there for almost three years and Lilja had settled into permanent residency here. They must have been like strangers by then, surely? There were no letters between them that she had found – which struck her as odd – and from all she had read in his sister’s and mother’s diaries, Casper’s trips back to Denmark had been infrequent. Not only that, she hadn’t been able to find any comment, anywhere, about their relationship, so she had absolutely no sense of its temperature. Stone cold or hot? Had they fallen passionately in love when Casper had returned from his war business to find this beautiful young girl living with the family? Or had it been a marriage of convenience, as Viggo had posited? Good families, merged fortunes, old allegiances and favours...

She looked at Trier...then at the baby in Lilja’s arms again. ‘When did Trier come to Solvtraeer to start working?’ she asked lightly.

‘I don’t know exactly. Sometime in the late spring, I think.’

Had he been down the summer before? She would need to go back to his diaries again. She had stopped concerning herself with his movements as soon as she acquired Lilja’s name, but perhaps their fates had become more intertwined than merely through a painting?

She looked again at the people on the other side of the image. The Saalbachs had kindly faces with appled cheeks, but there was reserve in their eyes and she sensed tension in the photograph. Were they uncomfortable with this presentation of a happy family? What secrets did they know that Casper didn’t? Darcy glanced down the corridor no one would have monitored at night: the Saalbachs across the drive, unable to hear the creak of a floorboard, the squeak of a mattress coil...

‘The Sallys look nice,’ she mumbled, knowing she was staring too hard, too long, as suspicions formed in her mind.

‘They were. And incredibly loyal. Mrs Sally became a mother figure to Lilja during her convalescence here. She helped with the birth.’

Darcy smiled at that. For some reason it comforted her to think that Lilja – practically an orphan, barely more than a child herself – had had someone looking after her after all.

‘My grandmother would tell me and Peder stories about how Old Sally would let her help him with the flower beds. And Little Sally taught her to fish and would take her foraging and truffle hunting in the woods around the back.’

‘You can grow truffles here?’ She was surprised. ‘I thought they only grew further south, in Italy and France.’

‘No, it’s ideal conditions here. To the extent that some of the so-called garden visitors who came to enjoy the grounds were interested in more than just the flowers.’

‘They tried to steal the truffles?’

‘They’re valuable. It happens,’ he shrugged.

She stepped back from the image, looking again at Trier. There was a large canvas on the easel in the photograph. This one beside her here? She reached a hand out to it. It certainly looked the same.

‘Is that Her Children on the easel there?’ Its back faced the camera.

Max looked at her and nodded. ‘We believe so.’

She could see how all this added to his claim. ‘So why isn’t this photograph hanging in the gallery with the others?’

He shrugged. ‘Because it’s in poor condition and there’s plenty of other ones of Trier with the family for people to see. This one just feels a bit more candid and private – Lilja’s not wearing shoes, she’s just had a baby, she’s not formally attired...And besides, we can’t put out everything that we have just because we have it.’

‘Yes,’ Darcy agreed. But something had snagged in her mind, an echo that made her look again at the photograph. She could feel a tiny itch in her brain that she couldn’t quite scratch as she stared at the gathered faces. One was unexpectedly familiar...

With a frown, she followed after him as he left the room, walking back down the corridor, past the family wedding photographs again, past Peder’s bedroom that might once have been Lilja’s...

She saw from the bedroom windows that it had begun to snow lightly, dusting the ground like a lacy veil. Light was beginning to fade, the garden starting to glow a soft violet. Dusk was falling.

They came downstairs in a silence that seemed to grow thicker with every step. Max was just ahead of her, and she stared at his back, at the slight dark-blond curl at the nape of his neck. For all his offhandedness, she couldn’t deny he had been generous in opening his home to her today when he had no obligation to do so. He had let her look around without suspicion. He had fed her and made sure she was warm. He had answered her questions...

Now what?

‘The snow really is trying to settle out there,’ she said as they walked through the hall, back towards the kitchen.

‘Scandi winters.’ He stopped by the prep table, unusually quiet.

Things had become stilted between them again now that her reason for being here had been satisfied. ‘...Back home, that would be enough snow to have all the trains cancelled and flights grounded.’ God. Small talk.

‘Mm.’ He looked away, his hands in the back pockets of his jeans, and she took it as the cue that he wanted her to go. It was his Saturday afternoon...

Her boots were by the back door and she walked straight over to them, pulling them on. She saw her jacket in the boot room and put that on too, wasting no more of his time.

‘You don’t want another coffee?’ he asked, mannered as always, watching as she readied herself to make a swift exit.

She didn’t look at him as she zipped up the jacket. ‘Thanks, but I really should get out of your way. I’ve already taken up too much of your Saturday as it is.’

‘It’s fine.’ So polite.

‘There’s a train at twenty past, so –’ She saw on the kitchen clock that it was ten to three.

‘Yes...I’ll drive you to the station.’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s really no need. I’ve got my bearings and the walk will do me good. This is the second Saturday on the trot I’ve missed my run, so...’

‘Right.’

She glanced at him but, ever since his withdrawal at the lunch table, he had scarcely looked at her. No more teasing, no more jokes. Nothing personal. She sighed. Not just shut out but locked out. ‘Well, thanks for letting me visit here. I appreciate it.’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t do anything. I can’t see what help it’s been for you.’

‘Oh, but it has. It’s been useful being able to see where Lilja was living when the portrait was painted. It all helps build up a—’

‘Feeling?’

She smiled at the tease. ‘Exactly.’ She swallowed, her hand reaching for the doorknob. ‘...Well, I guess I’ll see you at the next friendly meeting.’

It was her turn to tease, but he didn’t smile as she opened the door.

‘Bye, Max,’ she mumbled, walking out.

‘– Don’t.’

She looked back in surprise, her feet straddling the threshold. She was half in, half out. Caught. ‘What?’

‘Don’t go.’

‘But the train...’

‘Miss it.’

She blinked. ‘I have no reason to stay here now.’

‘...You do. You know you do.’ His voice was strained, though whether it was from the words he was saying, or those he wasn’t, she didn’t know.

‘But you said—’

‘I think we can agree it’s not working,’ he said brusquely. Still Max the Lawyer.

He clenched his jaw, looking stricken as the silence stretched. If she couldn’t speak, she also couldn’t move; she couldn’t even look away from him.

‘...Stay with me.’

They were straightforward words, but not for him. Not for a man who kept everyone at arm’s length. He’d spent the past few weeks constantly repelling her and pushing her back, but it had only made the tie between them grow ever more taut.

He looked away, mocking himself in disgust. ‘You wouldn’t believe I’m usually better than this—’

‘I don’t want you to be better!’ she blurted.

He looked surprised. ‘Then what do you want?’

‘More than what you’re offering. I don’t want to have one night with you and join your list of model hookups. And I don’t want perfection. I want you to be real – a flawed, feeling man! I want all of you. Not someone who compartmentalizes his life like it’s a sock drawer, Max.’

She came back into the room and stood before him. ‘Mess it all up, with me.’

He stared down at her and she could see the strain in him as he struggled to hold back what she knew he felt. Emotions were complicated. Dangerous. She took his hand and placed it on her hip, making him touch her, bringing him into the physical realm. She felt his fingertips press into her flesh once, then again, beginning to grip her more tightly as he gave her, finally, what she’d wanted from the start: to be held by him. Kissed. Craved.

Lost, together.

‘Five point one million,’ she murmured, reading out the latest TikTok tally, her cheek pressed against his chest. He was so warm, and smelled of sandalwood and log fires. His heart rate was only just beginning to get back to normal; so was hers.

‘Jesus,’ he groaned. ‘Why?’

‘It’s the hair kiss. That’s up there with a forehead kiss, you should know that. What were you thinking?’

He rubbed his eyes. ‘Clearly I wasn’t.’

She smiled, her finger twirling a chest hair; his other arm was looped around her and stroking her waist. ‘So you were running on instinct, were you?’

‘Running on instinct. Fuelled by jealousy.’

She shifted position to look up at him. ‘You’re being very candid.’

‘I have to. I need to be able to sleep. You’ve kept me awake too many nights lately.’ He moved his head so as to get a better look at her. His stubble was coming in; it had been a long evening. His gaze was soft, enveloping...

‘I have?’

‘Mm-hm.’

She gave a sleepy, satisfied smile. ‘Well, now, that’s nice to know.’

He chuckled, the sound deep in his chest. ‘Is it? You want me suffering over you?’

‘Of course! It’s what every woman wants for her lover. Abject despair.’ Her finger tapped his chest playfully.

‘Well then, mission accomplished. I thought standing in your hallway with a Valentino dress was rock bottom, but then you turned up to a meeting in a wetsuit with flashing antlers...Ripped my heart out.’

She laughed, and his arm tightened around her as he flipped her over to the other side of him. She felt the mood get serious between them again. The attraction was unstoppable.

‘Did Veronique really sort the dress out for you?’ she asked, looking up at him as he leaned over to kiss her.

‘No.’

‘And it wasn’t a gift?’

‘No. But I know their Finance Director and he got the manager to go in for me.’

‘Why did you do all that?’

He swallowed, his weight propped on one elbow as he pushed her hair back from her face, his knee nudging between her legs. ‘Because I wanted to,’ he said, looking pleased with himself. ‘So I did.’

‘You know this counts as a date?’ she said as they walked out of the wind and into the boat warehouse that was temporarily set up as a Christmas tree stand. He was doing a fine job of keeping her warm – wrapping her in hat, scarf and mammoth coat from his boot room – but it spoke to the level of coldness when the snow was settling on the beach.

He shook his head. ‘No, it doesn’t. A date means dinner, or...ice skating.’ He gave a shudder of disapproval.

‘Absolutely not,’ she pushed back. ‘That’s just a template for beginners. A walk on the beach, takeaway coffees, and now buying a Christmas tree, is premium date territory.’

‘...So you’re saying I’m good at this, then?’ He looked down at her with a grin as he slung his arm over her shoulder, clasping her hand.

‘You’re brilliant at everything; you know you are,’ she murmured, as he reached down and kissed her again. He was up to eleven hair kisses and counting, although she didn’t think he was aware of it.

They were oblivious to the people milling around them in the boatyard. ‘I’m wishing we’d driven down here now, though.’

‘Why?’

‘To get you home quicker.’

‘Hmm.’ She grinned, relishing the prospect.

He pulled back as he remembered where they were. ‘...Not to mention getting the tree back.’

‘Oh, right! And how were you going to get a Christmas tree into an R8?’ she laughed.

‘Good point,’ he conceded. ‘We’ll have to carry the tree back.’

‘Excellent,’ she shrugged.

‘It’ll have to be a small one.’

‘Over my dead body. This is your first Christmas tree in years. We’re getting a whopper.’

‘A whopper ,’ he laughed, amused by her colloquial English, ‘will take two hours to carry back from here.’

She squeezed closer to him. ‘Then it’ll take two hours. It’ll become part of our legend and we’ll tell everyone all about our first date when it took us two hours to carry our first Christmas tree home.’

‘I see,’ he murmured, looking happy. ‘I’m beginning to see that dinner would have been easier.’

‘I’m not interested in easier,’ she whispered, reaching a hand to his cheek and kissing him again. She wanted today to never end. Just like she had wanted last night to roll into eternity. Every moment she shared with him, she wanted to endure.

They stopped by a stand of Nordmann firs propped against a railing. Max glanced down the row, assessing size, straightness, colour...He went over to one and stood it upright. It had to be nine feet high at least, with wide, splayed, bushy branches all the way around.

It was enormous. Unwieldy. Heavy.

She grinned at him, shucking her hands out. ‘It’s perfect.’