Almost exhilarated.
The waiter placed a glass of champagne in front of each of them.
‘Would you like me to go through the menu with you right away?’ he said with a smile.
‘I think we’d prefer to wait a little while,’ Johanne said quickly.
‘Of course. I’ll come back.’
Karen raised her glass.
‘Here’s to you,’ she said, smiling. ‘To think we’ve managed to meet up again. Fantastic.’
They sipped their champagne.
‘Mmm. Wonderful. Tell me more about Kris… Kristi…’
‘Kristiane. For a long time the experts insisted that it could be some form of autism. Asperger’s perhaps. But it doesn’t really fit. Admittedly, she does need fixed routines, and for long periods she can be highly dependent on order and clear systems. Sometimes she’s almost reminiscent of a savant, someone who is autistic but has certain highly developed skills. But then, all of a sudden, without any clue as to what has brought about the change, she’s just like an ordinary child with mild learning difficulties. And although she finds it difficult to make real friends, she shows great flexibility when it comes to relationships with other people. She’s…’
Johanne picked up her glass again, surprised at how good it felt to talk about her older daughter with someone who had never met her.
‘… tremendously loving towards her family.’
‘She really is absolutely adorable,’ said Karen, handing back the photograph. ‘You are so, so lucky to have her.’
Karen’s comment made Johanne feel warm, almost embarrassed. Isak loved his daughter more than anything on earth, and Adam was the most loving stepfather in the world. Both sets of grandparents worshipped Kristiane, and she was as well integrated into the social environment surrounding the Vik and Stubo families as it was possible for a child like her to be. Occasionally someone would remark that Kristiane was lucky to have such a good family. Live Smith had given Johanne the feeling that she was happy to have Kristiane in her school.
But no one had ever said that Johanne was lucky to have a daughter like Kristiane.
‘It’s true,’ said Johanne. ‘I’m… we’re really lucky to have her.’
She quickly blinked back the tears. Karen reached across the table and placed her hand on Johanne’s cheek. The gesture felt oddly welcome, in spite of all the years that lay between them.
‘Children are God’s greatest gift,’ said Karen. ‘They are always, always a blessing, wherever they come from, whoever they come to, and whatever they are like. They should be treated, loved and respected accordingly.’
A single tear escaped and trickled down Johanne’s cheek.
Americans and their big words, she thought. Americans and their pompous, high-flown, beautiful choice of words. She smiled quickly and wiped the tear away with the back of her hand.
‘Are you ready to order?’
The waiter reappeared, looking from one to the other.
‘Yes,’ said Johanne. ‘It would be very helpful if you could go through the menu in English so that I don’t have to translate for my friend.’
This was no problem for the waiter. He spent almost ten minutes explaining and describing each dish and answering all of Karen’s interested questions. When they had finally agreed on food and wine, Johanne realized that Karen was far more worldly than she was. Even the waiter seemed impressed.
They began with oysters.
There were no oysters on the menu, and the waiter didn’t mention them at all during his comprehensive account of what the restaurant had to offer. Karen shook her head when he had finished, smiled her dazzling white smile and suggested that every self-respecting master chef always has a few oysters tucked away.
Always, she insisted.
It was true.
The problem was that Johanne had never eaten oysters.
She was an academic with a PhD. Well-travelled and financially secure. She liked food. She had eaten dog in China and deep-fried spiders from a shack in Angkor Wat. But she had never dared to try oysters.
She looked at the plate. The half-shells lay there on a bed of ice, smelling faintly of the shoreline. Nobody could claim that the slimy, dirty white blobs looked appetizing. She glanced at Karen, who trickled a mixture of white wine and vinegar over each oyster from a small bowl, before picking up the first shell and sliding the contents into her mouth. She closed her eyes and rolled the oyster around in her mouth, then swallowed and exclaimed: ‘Perfect!’
Johanne followed suit.
The oyster was the best thing she had ever tasted.
‘Johanne,’ said Karen when the dish was empty. ‘Tell me more. Tell me everything. Absolutely everything!’
They talked their way through two more courses. They talked about their time at college and mutual friends from those days. About families and parents, about their joys and frustrations. About their children. They talked over each other, laughed and interrupted each other. The acoustics in the small restaurant were hopeless; Karen’s loud laugh bounced off the bare walls, disturbing the other guests. However, the waiter remained friendly, discreetly topping up their glasses as soon as they were almost empty.
‘Karen, I have to ask you about something.’
Johanne looked at the fourth course as it was placed in front of her: quail on a bed of artichoke purée. The little bird was surrounded by a circle of fine strips of Parma ham interspersed with pickled cherry tomatoes.
‘Tell me about the APLC,’ she said.
‘How do you know I work there?’ Karen carefully wiped her mouth with the thick fabric serviette before picking up her knife and fork again.
‘I googled you,’ said Johanne. ‘At the moment I’m working on a project that-’
Karen laughed, making the glasses clink.
‘We’ve been sitting here for over two hours, and we still haven’t got round to telling each other what we do! You first – start talking!’
And Johanne talked. She talked about her job at the Institute of Criminology, about the doctoral thesis she completed in 2000, about how she loved research but found the teaching obligations which went with her current position something of a trial, and about the joys and frustrations of having to combine her career with two demanding children. Gradually, she got around to talking about the project on which she was currently working. By the time she had finished, the quail were tiny skeletons on otherwise empty plates.
‘You must come over and see us,’ Karen said firmly. ‘What we do is highly relevant to your research.’
‘And now it’s your turn,’ said Johanne. ‘Off you go.’
She asked the waiter if they could have a short pause before the next course. She could feel that she had had a little bit too much to drink, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t remember when she had last eaten out, and she definitely couldn’t remember when she had felt this good. So when the waiter refilled her glass, she smiled appreciatively at him.
‘We started in 1971, and we’re located in Montgomery, Alabama,’ Karen began, holding her glass of red wine up to the light to assess the colour. ‘The two founders – who are white by the way – were part of the civil rights movement. They founded the company mainly to work against racism. It doesn’t make any money, of course.’
She paused, as if trying to work out how to tell a long story in the shortest possible time.
‘From the start you could say we acted as an organization providing free legal aid. Not that I was there at the time!’
Once more her laughter echoed around the room, and an elderly couple two tables away glared in their direction.
‘In those days I hadn’t even finished elementary school. In 1981 the company set up an information department, simply to make it easier to reach our only real goaclass="underline" an America that works in agreement with its once revolutionary constitution. For the first few years the struggle was mainly focused on white supremacy groups.’