Page 107 of All I Want for Christmas

‘No, nothing like that...’

‘Do you want to file a report against him?’

‘...No.’ She squeezed her eyes shut and took a breath, trying to remain calm. Composed. She just wanted to get away from here. ‘Uh, what should I do with the kayak?’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll deal with that,’ the man said with a concerned look. ‘They all go back to the same place.’

‘Okay.’ Darcy glanced back, finding Aksel alone in the crowd, bobbing on the water. He wasn’t looking her way, but was staring ahead with a dark look. How could she have got him so wrong? She was trembling a little, her breathing shallow from the shock. She had a fierce urge to cry.

‘You can’t stay here, miss,’ the marshal said kindly. ‘You’ll need to get up on the bank.’

‘Okay, y-yes.’ Darcy turned and made her way up the steps to where the crowds stood ten deep, people shuffling a few paces to the side as she tried to slink through inconspicuously even though she was bulky and unwieldy in her protective gear.

Her phone buzzed – another message from Otto, telling her to hurry up.

She looked back one last time, but the canal – and Aksel – was hidden from her sights. She tapped on the Uber app and made her getaway.

She squeaked as she walked. The security officers had laughed at her as she gave her name at the door. It felt ridiculous walking through such a hallowed institution gloved in neoprene and tinsel.

Heads turned as her inelegant approach was heard. Margit Kinberg did a double take; Helle Foss’s eyes narrowed; Otto frowned as if he’d not in fact been told she was sitting on a kayak in Nyhavn when he had called.

‘Please, don’t dress up on our account,’ Helle quipped.

‘My things are still in the locker,’ Darcy replied in a quiet voice. The upset from their fight on the water had settled into her bones now and she couldn’t quite shake it. She felt subdued and just wanted to crawl into her bed. ‘We’d already left when you called and there was no time to get back there.’ She hadn’t even taken off the lifejacket. There was nowhere to leave it and she only risked losing it; she would have to go back over there in the morning to return this kit and pick up her things.

She glanced at Max. He was staring at her as if she was a riddle (or perhaps a joke). Too late, she remembered her antlers, still flashing on her head. Could he guess she’d been on a date? Did he know it was with the same guy who had stood, bare-chested and drinking wine, in front of him at her door? She knew he couldn’t possibly imagine what had just happened with the kind vet with the soulful eyes who turned out to have problems with anger, performance and alcohol.

He looked away again in the next instant; he was wearing jeans and a sweater. Weekend Max. Had he not had any plans tonight? He didn’t celebrate Christmas, of course, but did he not even have a St Lucia’s party to go to? A model to pick up? He hadn’t responded to her thank-you text on Sunday evening; nor had he picked up on Monday when she had called, determined to pay for the dress. He was ghosting her.

‘I got here as soon as I could.’ She felt tearful, and perhaps there was a suggestion of that in her voice, because Otto put a hand on her shoulder.

‘It’s quite all right, Darcy. We were busy inspecting it ourselves anyway. This is the first time we’ve drawn breath...Take a look.’

He stepped back, creating a space for her around the table, just as he had a couple of weeks ago when she’d received a similar call – but this time the UV lamp was turned off, no longer needed. InsteadHer Children, delicately held up in a specialist clamp, had been turned around and there, affixed on the back, lay Lilja Madsen’s portrait.

Darcy gasped as she laid eyes upon it – uponher– unobscured for the first time. Her hands flew to her mouth as she took in the painting clearly now. Immediately she looked at everyone else in surprise – did they see it too? – but they were all watching her with blank expressions.

‘Have a good look, Darcy,’ Margit instructed. ‘We need confirmation if it’s her.’

Darcy hesitated. Were they serious? Couldn’t they see...? But she wasn’t going to disobey the director of the National Gallery and she bent forward, wetsuit squeaking ignominiously, so that she was at eye level with the portrait.

The colours were far more vivid than she had expected – theflesh tones suffused with yellow ochre, as per Vermeer, to add luminosity and imbue a sense of flushed radiance and youth. Lilja’s dress was green with delicate pink buds and had a narrow lace frill at the neck. The red necklace lay behind it, winking through the lattices, only the gilded central bead clearly visible front and centre at her throat. And on her shoulder, Darcy saw now what had been indistinct before – not a dead fox stole, as Otto had speculated, but a robin, beautifully fat, with a tomato-red chest.

The background was unfinished but the impasto looked deliberately done, as if reinforcing the point that the painting’s only focus was this young woman’s face. The strong brushwork in green earth suggested trees: an exterior sitting.

‘So there you are,’ Darcy whispered, looking into her eyes at last. They were round and light brown, flecked with gold. She had freckles too, and a tan, and though her hair was pulled back in a loose braid, wisps of baby hair sprouted from her temple, as if she’d been caught in the wind. Had she just come in from one of her beach walks?

It was a startlingly lovely rendering. Now that she could see details and not just shapes, the painting offered so much more narrative. She could tell that the Lilja who had been painted here was different to the Lilja standing in the photograph by the water’s edge; she had filled out, yes, but more than that, she had survived something terrible. She had lived through unimaginable pain and loss. The tilt of her head had always been distinctive even in silhouette, but now Darcy was able to see the look in her eyes, she could see this was an older, wiser, stronger Lilja. She would have been around eighteen here but she had already endured so much. The girl had become a woman. She was coming into her own.

...So what had happened that made her walk into the sea? Darcy saw a date lightly traced in the bottom right corner:August 1922.

Darcy frowned; Lilja had been dead by the month’s end.

Someone – Max? – cleared his throat impatiently, as if reminding her to get on with it; this was everyone’s Friday night. Slowly, Darcy straightened up. ‘Yes. That’s definitely Lilja Madsen.’

Margit’s look of displeasure showed it was not the answer she had hoped to hear. ‘How can you be so certain?’

‘The necklace, for one – we have photographs of her wearing it. Her hairstyle, for another.’

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