‘First I met Ryan in New York. His father was a stockbroker and loaded. He helped me invest my money, most of it in IBM stock. It was a shrewd investment. Later, Ryan and I travelled west. I was pregnant by then. We stayed for a while in Tiburon, an area of San Francisco, living the life on Ryan’s dad’s money while I got bigger. It was a good time. I thought about you a lot, of course, but I couldn’t write, as you know, and then… well, gradually you just faded away. It wasn’t until I came back home to Denmark that you became part of me again. From a distance, I mean, whenever you were in the media.’
‘When did you come back?’
‘Much later, in ninety-three.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘We got involved in the Rainbow Family… you know, the Peoples Temple and Jim Jones?’
He wasn’t sure he did, though the latter name rang a bell.
‘I think so. There was that mass suicide, wasn’t there?’
‘That’s right, but not until later, obviously. Anyway, they had a lot of good things going on when we started. Demos, people working for the cause, a lot of social projects. Racially we were very mixed as well, and in a way it was what I’d always dreamed of. But then gradually I began finding out there were things happening that I didn’t like, religious stuff, sex, misuse of authority. These things kept coming to light and just piling up. I wanted out, but Ryan wanted to stay.’
She fell silent.
‘That can’t have been easy?’
‘My father-in-law, as I called him, even though Ryan and I weren’t married, used to come over to the camp, trying to persuade us to leave. I think he’d probably hired half the bodyguards in California. He hated Peoples Temple. But Jim Jones didn’t keep us there by force. Still, I ended up going back to New York, where I gave birth to our daughter. Unfortunately, Ryan stayed. All the way to Guyana.’
The rest was predictable. Simonsen listened politely as she told him about settling back in Sleepy Hollow under the wing of her father-in-law; her daughter growing up and eventually having a child of her own; the rising value of her own stock investment – tales from a life without drama, rich in American dollars. Only her return home interested him.
‘Why did you come back?’
‘I missed Denmark. I always did. And then… well, there’s this rather negative tradition in my family on the female side. Do you remember how much I adored my grandmother, but didn’t get on with my mother at all?’
‘I do, yes.’
‘Well, that’s how my daughter feels, too, and her daughter after her. Teresa’s living with me now. She’s been here for two years and her Danish is already fluent.’
‘I didn’t think it was that easy to get in these days, with all those reunification rules.’
‘My family’s well connected, including in Washington. To start with, she was from a diplomatic family, an embassy child, no questions asked about whose. Now, though, she’s got a regular residence permit. She’s a lovely girl. But you’ve seen her yourself. She’s amazing, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, indeed. Amazing.’
Rita picked up the bill.
It was Sunday, the ninth day of the last month of autumn, and the Countess had gone motherly on him.
‘The roads can be slippery in the mornings in November, all the more so in the north.’
Simonsen was about to protest. The advance into November had completely escaped his attention. He checked the date on his watch and his words caught in his throat. She went on mollycoddling him.
‘I’ve gathered the printouts of all your internet bookings together and put them in the glove compartment, in case there’s any problem at the hotels.’
‘I’m not staying at hotels, it’s hostels, B &Bs and the like. Small places.’
‘Well, at the small places, then. Now, drive carefully, and if you’re feeling tired, pull in.’
‘We’ve been through all this.’
But there was no let-up, not even as he got into the car, ready to go.
‘Have you got your pills?’
‘Yes, I’ve got my pills.’
‘Promise to call me every day?’
‘I promise. Every single day. Just give me a kiss so I can get going before the rush hour starts.’
‘It’s Sunday, there is no rush hour, you know that. Anyway, have a good trip, the two of you.’
He smiled. She was referring to the picture on the back seat. After much deliberation he’d chosen the one that had made Pauline Berg cry, which happened to be one of his favourites, too. He’d had it framed. The picture he’d originally saved for himself was returned to the collection, and now all seventeen would be going back to Jørgen Kramer Nielsen’s estate while he was away. The Countess had promised him that she would arrange this.
‘How about that kiss?’ he said.
She gave him a peck and off he went.
Not until he’d crossed the Øresund Bridge did he feel his journey had started. From Malmö, he followed the coast north to Gothenburg, cutting inland and stopping at the Vänern for his jog. After that, he drove along the western shores of the great lake as far as Karlstad, forging on in an easterly direction and eventually checking in to his lodgings in Gävle north of Stockholm in late afternoon. He’d decided to do a relatively long drive the next day. It seemed right to get as many kilometres on the clock as possible to begin with. Besides, he knew the Swedish forests quickly became monotonous when viewed through the windscreen of a car: endless ribbons of road, straight as a die, and nothing but trees on both sides, kilometre upon kilometre without sign of human habitation and only the pinprick of light far ahead at the apex of the road, for ever out of reach, no matter how far one drove. That night, he slept like a log.
The next day he followed the Gulf of Bothnia, passing through Sundsvall and Umeå, the deciduous trees gone, the spruce gradually becoming sparser and more stunted. Twice he saw eagles. The second time, he stopped the car and sat for a long time watching their majestic, soaring flight high above his head. Arriving almost at the head of the gulf, he stopped for the night in a small town where he’d booked himself into a B&B.
He spoke to her frequently. Just the odd word to begin with, breaking the tedium of his journey, then gradually longer utterances about the landscape and how far they’d got. Pulling in for breaks, he would lift her out of the car and put her down next to him. In those situations, especially, he felt they were together.
‘I love you, Lucy. Nothing can change that, it’s no use denying it. We would have met in Copenhagen, I’m sure. Bumped into each other in a shop, or on the street, on the S-train, or maybe in a park. Yes, parks are good, a park would have suited us. You with your rucksack and that shy smile, me with the courage to follow you, without even thinking, no two ways about it. We could have hitchhiked our way here. A week, a fortnight, what difference would it have made? We had so much time to spend, we’d have got here eventually. But they killed you. They took away your future, and mine, too.’
The more sentimental the better. Tears welled in his eyes, and he revelled in it.
On the third day, they veered north-east, Lapland. Passing the Arctic Circle he said:
‘You made it, Lucy. You’ll have to wait for summer to see your midnight sun, though, and be prepared for a long, dark winter first. I wish I could do something about that, but I can’t.’
At Karesuando they stopped and saw Sweden’s northernmost church before following the road along the border of Finland. The scenery was magnificent and breathtaking: steadfast, slender birch lining rushing rivers; a vast wilderness where no human would be seen for kilometres on end; an immense and humbling sky. They reached Treriksröset before nightfall. Ever the informative tourist guide, he entertained his imaginary passenger:
‘Here you can stand with one leg in Norway, one in Sweden and one in Finland, and all at the same time, as my old geography teacher once told us, though none of us dared to laugh, I might add. Let’s see if he was right, shall we?’