The oak tree beneath which they had sat was still there. He recognised it among a thousand others. He sat down. Again. And almost felt she was at his side. Perhaps the reason he had loved Rita, in spite of everything, was that she always managed to surprise him. To do things he could never quite predict, or say things when he was least expecting it. She was impossible to pin a label on. Just as he thought he knew her, he didn’t. And that day thirty-five years ago was no exception. She’d leaned her head against his shoulder. It was the first time they had touched in what seemed like an age. He was thinking it was over between them. And then she said quietly:
‘Konrad, I’m pregnant.’
A hundred thoughts passed through his mind in an instant. Marriage, responsibility, money. The prospect was overwhelming. A child. He was going to be a father.
‘I’m not sure if it’s yours. I think so, but… I don’t know.’
He couldn’t remember what he’d said in reply. Or if he’d spoken at all. But her next sentence had stayed with him:
‘I don’t want it. The time isn’t right. Not yet.’
He protested, albeit half-heartedly. But Rita ignored him.
‘Put your arms around me.’
He held her as requested. It was less than a year until Denmark introduced free abortion.
The house in Søllerød was big when he was on his own. He missed the Countess, that was it, there was no point in denying it. Certainly not to himself.
He spent the Saturday on the postman case, mainly to kill time doing something worthwhile. He reread a couple of reports he’d taken home with him and spent most of the afternoon going through Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s supermarket receipts to see if he could turn anything up besides what Pauline Berg had found. He couldn’t. Then he wrote an e-mail to the priest after considering for a moment whether he should pay him a visit. For no other reason than that he felt like it: the man had made an impression on him, a good impression at that. In the end he couldn’t be bothered and wrote to him instead, asking directly if, in his work, the priest had ever come across the British charity Missing Children, to which Kramer Nielsen had bequeathed so much money. An hour later he received a reply in the form of a link to the organisation’s website, accompanied by a polite Best wishes. He’d visited the site before, so it wasn’t much use. Still, it had been worth a try.
Later in the day something happened that made him happy. The doorbell rang, rather cautiously, he thought. He went to the door and there was Maja Nørgaard with a sheepish smile on her face and a lavish bouquet of flowers in her hand. He hadn’t seen her since the day he’d interviewed her in the bar near Enghave Station over a month ago. She was looking well, her eyes bright and attentive, the way a girl ought to look at that age.
Her thanks were awkwardly delivered: she shook his hand and made a mess of the words that had clearly been practised beforehand. But there was no mistaking her genuine gratitude: she had got a grip on her life now, stuck to soft drinks during the week and would be keeping away from drugs until she was a hundred. Her mother, a therapist and a social worker had all helped her. Konrad Simonsen sat down on his front step. He didn’t want to invite her in, it seemed wrong somehow. On the other hand he didn’t want to turn her away either if she wanted to talk. She sat down next to him and spoke hesitantly, as though searching for some bigger picture:
‘It’s weird. All through school they tell you not to bully and not to leave others out. But it’s only now that I understand how right that is. I could have been nicer to Robert… we all could. He was in love with me, and there was nothing wrong with that. I should have looked beyond the surface instead of thinking about how fat he was. I should have talked to him, told him I actually liked him. I could easily have done that without… without…’
She ground to a halt, eventually adding, ‘I’m sure it would have meant a lot to him.’
Konrad Simonsen replied softly:
‘I’m sure it would, Maja. But what happened wasn’t your fault. That’s important to remember, too.’
She smiled uncertainly. He told her about other people he knew whose lives had gone wrong, without anyone being to blame. She listened gratefully, and he elaborated to make his stories fit the bill a bit better. Eventually, he got to his feet, and Maja did likewise.
‘The therapist says the same as you, that it’s not my fault.’
‘It isn’t, you’ll see.’
He thanked her again for the flowers and she edged away, only then to submit to an urge and spontaneously run back to hug him. They stood there for a moment before she let go and ran back down the garden path to a waiting car, waving as she went. Happy.
On the Sunday, Anna Mia came by unannounced. They’d agreed to have dinner together the next day and Simonsen had promised to take her to a restaurant in town, so her visit came as a surprise, though he was no less pleased on that account. He sat in the kitchen while she ravenously plundered the fridge. Making herself a sandwich, she asked:
‘If you’ve bought my present, can I have it now instead of having to go about the town with it tomorrow?’
This wasn’t good. He’d forgotten all about her birthday after his argument with the Countess. Moreover, she read his look of surprise like lightning.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my birthday, Dad.’
It was a minefield. There’d been so many birthdays in her life when all she’d wanted was a present from him. It didn’t matter what it was – just something. Tears welled in her eyes and she put the knife down. There was nothing for it but to tell the truth.
She wiped her eyes and pulled herself together. Rather too quickly, he thought.
‘Where is it then, this camera?’ she asked, trying to sound casual. ‘I’d like to see it, at least.’
He had put it in the garden room together with the long lens that had been delivered a couple of days before. Twenty seconds after he told her, the boxes were in front of him on the table. She got the camera out.
‘Wow, this is nice.’
He finished making the sandwich for her while she admired the Nikon. They talked about it. Maybe she could pay half herself, if that was all right, bit by bit over a few months. He wouldn’t hear of it and went off to get scissors, sticky tape and wrapping paper, realising it was all a foregone conclusion.
‘Are you sure you can afford it, Dad?’
Of course he could. He earned a decent salary, but after moving in with the Countess it was as though he was continually comparing his finances to hers, and in that game he was always going to come out the loser. Nonetheless, at the moment he was spending rather less than he earned, partly because the Countess did most of the shopping herself and refused to keep tabs. It was a waste of time, she insisted. But he told none of this to Anna Mia, making do with the bare bones:
‘Yes.’
They wrapped her present together. In Christmas wrapping paper, the only sort he could find.
‘What about your mum, though?’ he asked.
Before, when he’d told her, she could see the problem and had partially agreed with him that the present from him and the Countess would overshadow everything else she was likely to get. But then all of a sudden the solution was right in front of them.
‘I’ll just take the lens with me.’
Of course. How hard did it have to be?
When Simonsen went into work on the Monday morning there was an envelope from the lab waiting for him on his desk. Feeling expectant, he opened it and emptied out the contents in front of him. Photographs, just as he’d hoped: twelve black-and-white prints that looked like holiday snaps. He examined them closely, lingering on one in particular. All showed a group of young people in various everyday situations, as far as he could see, taken in and around the type of wooden house that city dwellers liked to take in the country or by the sea for the summer months. In all twelve he recognised the girl from the posters, and in six of them she was on her own. Besides these prints the envelope contained a smaller packet of negatives, cut out individually so that they could be pressed flat together. He picked one out at random and noted that it was the same image as one of the prints and that the number of negatives matched up.