Anna smiled feebly and said goodnight. She sat down in her living room, barely able to keep her eyes open. For the first five minutes she just sat there. Johannes was dead. Her brain refused to accept it. She couldn’t tell Jens and Cecilie. They would freak out completely and refuse to allow her ever to set foot in the university again. Jens would stomp up and down and threaten to expose the department in the press. Then she remembered neither of them was talking to her. She kicked off her shoes.
She wanted to cry, but her chest tightened and no tears came. She mourned Johannes. Then she called Karen.
Karen picked up the telephone immediately and was thrilled when she realized who it was. She wasn’t the least frosty or guarded, as Anna had feared. Karen chatted away. She was a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and had lived in Copenhagen since August. She loved it, Copenhagen was a great city, and she had made lots of friends in no time. She knew where Anna lived but hadn’t called her. She admitted, frankly, that she needed to summon the courage after all these years, but last Tuesday she had bumped into Cecilie in the street. Cecilie had told her Anna was super-busy and one of her supervisors had died. Cecilie had promised to e-mail Karen with the date of Anna’s dissertation defense, and they had arranged for Karen to be there. As a graduation present.
“Imagine, you’re a real biologist now!” Karen exclaimed. “I’m so proud of you!”
Karen wanted to know everything about Lily. Brown hair, red hair, Anna’s color? What did she like? Could Karen buy her a present? A doll? Or a Spiderman apron so they could make models out of clay together? Anna was filled with regret. Why hadn’t she kept in touch with Karen? It seemed beyond silly, and Anna had an uncomfortable feeling it was her who had chosen not to see Karen, rather than the other way around. Her throat tightened and she responded monosyllabically to Karen’s joyful outbursts. Finally, Karen asked how she really was, apart from busy.
And the whole story poured out of her. Thomas, their shipwrecked relationship, Cecilie picking up the pieces, but who now stuck to her life like a barnacle, her graduate work at the department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology, about her supervisor and a fellow student, who both appeared to have been murdered. At this point, Anna burst into tears and Karen insisted on coming over—there’s no way you can be alone right now, she said, horrified.
“I don’t want to be by myself, either,” Anna sobbed. “But would you be able to come over tomorrow evening instead, please?” she asked in a small voice. “Would you like to stay with us over the weekend? Help me with Lily, so I don’t have to call Cecilie? I don’t want to call Cecilie. I feel so ashamed.” Karen agreed without a moment’s hesitation. She would love to come; there was nothing she would rather do. “I’ve missed you so much,” Anna said and hung up before Karen had time to reply.
Afterward, she was unable to fall asleep. The thoughts were churning inside her head. Finally, she sat up in her bed. Johannes was dead. He was in cold storage somewhere, on a stretcher in a mortuary. And she had never apologized to him. She had yelled at him, she had punished him for what he had said to the police, even though she wasn’t even seriously angry about it. Now it was too late, and Johannes had been right. She acted as if the whole world revolved around her.
Anna got up, walked through the apartment, past the nailed-down door to Thomas’s old office, and into the nursery where she picked up her sleeping daughter.
Once they were cuddled up under Anna’s comforter, she felt guilty. It was one thing when the kid toddled in during the night wanting to get into her bed, another to actually pick her up. Lily was a human being, not a hot water bottle. Cecilie had a tendency to act as if she was entitled to Anna. Not in an evil or calculating way, Cecilie wasn’t like that. But situations and clashes often had an undercurrent of “but you’re my daughter and I’m your mom.” As if that justified everything. It didn’t give you the right to cut corners and cross boundaries whenever you felt like it, it didn’t allow you to just take and keep on taking. And here Anna was, getting high on her own child. Inhaling the smell of Lily’s hair in the darkness, unfolding her sleeping fingers, caressing a warm, round shoulder. She couldn’t hold back the tears. The bedroom was dark and the street below very quiet. The bed linen absorbed her tears, but they kept on coming. She wanted her love for Lily to be pure. She wanted to be able to love her child. She desperately wanted to be the constant sun, warming her from afar, warming Lily, an eager seedling who wanted to grow up, up and away, grow lush green leaves and scarlet flowers and juicy pods. But her heart felt numb.
She stuck her arm under the pillow where Lily’s head was resting and pulled her closer. Anna had never been able to delight in things the way Karen could. Karen would be delirious with joy when she saw Anna after summer vacation, or when she cut school and spent the day shopping and going to cafés in Odense with her mother, with whom she had a seemingly great and uncomplicated relationship. Karen loved movies, spaghetti Bolognese, the beach, card games, and musicals, which she would play at maximum volume and dance around to with her wild curls. Karen never hinted her approach to life was better than Anna’s. Karen danced and sang at the top of her voice. Anna would hesitate, then tap her foot a couple of times. They had been friends. And Anna had messed it up.
Was Anna even capable of enjoying herself? Her parents mattered. A great deal. Just as Lily meant the world to her. But her worth came from the head, not the heart. She turned away from Lily, ashamed to entertain such thoughts while the toddler clung to her. She looked at the light from the city, which seeped in through the coarse curtain fabric.
When Troels had walked out that day ten years ago, the summer they graduated from high school, Karen had been beside herself. She had looked for him everywhere, called his parents; they had to find him, she wanted a reconciliation, she said so over and over, even though it was Anna who had done the damage. To Karen it was unbearable that they weren’t friends, and Anna tried to empathize with her friend’s anxiety. Where was he? What had she done? Deep down, she hadn’t actually cared, but merely pretended. He had been a bad friend. He no longer mattered. They could go to hell. All of them.
But there had been one great love. The thought was banal, trite even, but it filled her with horror because she longed to love Lily the way she had once loved Thomas. Passionately, unconditionally, non-negotiably. Anna let go of Lily completely and sat upright. It couldn’t be true that she had been able to love him but not her child. That had to be impossible. She didn’t want to be someone like that. Thomas was the past. Lily was the present and the future, she was forever. Anna swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She checked the time; it was 3 a.m.
She left the bedroom and closed the door behind her so as not to wake Lily. She made coffee, a large mug with warm milk. She lit a fire in the living room and pushed the armchair in front of the open doors of the stove.
Why are you so angry, Søren had asked? For a moment, his eyes had been tender and curious. As if he truly didn’t understand. Perhaps she didn’t understand it, either. That was just the way she was. Anger was her most powerful emotion. Much stronger than love. The thought paralyzed her. She was angry with Thomas, but her anger was ultimately futile. They hadn’t seen him for over two years, and all she knew was that he worked in Stockholm and she had his number somewhere, but apart from that she knew nothing and he never contacted them.
But she was also angry with Cecilie and feelings ran high every time they saw each other. And Jens annoyed her. When he picked his nose, when he was late, when he couldn’t quit smoking, or generally failed to pull himself together. She was incapable of tempering her irritation with concern and tolerance, she simply blew a fuse. At the slightest thing. And then there was Lily. Anna obviously wasn’t angry with her three-year-old daughter, but neither did she possess the patience she so desperately longed to have. Lily was demanding and impossible to negotiate with, she was stubborn, she acted as if she had no common sense, and she clearly hadn’t because she was only three years old!