Page 58 of All I Want for Christmas

‘You will call me, of course, if there is any issue?’

‘Of course,’ she smiled.

‘Very well. See you in the morning, then, Darcy,’ he said, turning right onto the pavement.

‘Bright and early,’ she smiled, turning left.

She walked at a clip, her breath hanging in cold plumes. Every so often she blew on her hands to keep them warm; cycling would have warmed her up better, but the nearest rental bike rack was a hundred metres in the opposite direction, and it wasn’t worth getting a bike for such a short distance.

Within ten minutes, she was standing outside Max’s house. It was becoming a familiar pilgrimage. She didn’t want to go in – just being there again felt like some kind of defeat – but she reminded herself that she was doing it for Viggo. And there were no lights on inside; the house was reassuringly empty. Max would never even know she’d been back.

She walked up the steps and slid the key into the lock. Almost immediately, an alarm began ticking, but she saw the digital keypad set high on the wall and entered the code Viggo had given her. Immediately, the ticking stopped. No fuss. No drama.

She switched on the lights as she closed the door behind her and found herself returned to the scene of the crime. Cold beauty. Hard elegance. Much like the women he dated, she supposed.

She walked through and straight up the stairs to the kitchen, turned on the light and stood for a moment as the majestic room was revealed again. It really was a dazzling space. She tried to imagine Max hosting dinner parties at that vast table, but it was impossible for her to fathom; she couldn’t imagine what his friends must be like. International bankers? Hedge funders?

The box was sitting on the low coffee table between the sections of the green velvet sofa; a form atop it.

‘See? No harm done,’ she muttered to herself. And why should there have been? What, really, were the chances of a burglary or a fire? Everyone’s paranoia about the safekeeping of the archive material was slightly on the hysterical side, in her opinion, and if it weren’t for the fact that Jens was going to collect the box from here himself, she would have taken it home and worked from there.

She sighed, looking around the kitchen with a more relaxedeye now. A navy jumper dangled over one of the stools; a pair of running shoes had been kicked under the cabinet. The Sunday papers were still lying in a pile on the sofa from when she’d left the other night. A silk tie was coiled up on the kitchen counter...There were tiny signs of his life here, but all they really told her was that his housekeeper didn’t come in daily. Unlike the gallery, there was no pulse in this building.

Her tummy rumbled, and she realized she was starving. Starving and thirsty. She thought of the bottle of sauvignon blanc wedged in her fridge door, just ready for her to come home to tonight – whereas he had a wine fridge with tinted glass, full from top to bottom. She could hear him even now, in her head, tutting and ordering her to ‘just have a glass’, impatient with her mannered reserve. Instead, she shrugged off her coat and scarf, ordered dinner on Uber Eats and sat down to begin work. These little acts of resistance were a small rebellion against his largesse. A rejection of the man who’d played her.

The box, when opened, revealed a medley of material. Topmost were some letters, bundled together with a brown shoelace. She read as quickly as she could – these were letters to Trier’s mother in Odense – but the handwriting was sloppy and rushed as ever and his colloquial language made it difficult for her to gather speed. It was November 1920 and he had returned to Denmark now; he mainly seemed to complain about the cold, having become used to the Mediterranean heat, occasionally asking after Sannie, whom she guessed to be a pet, and whether they had heard from Uncle Malthe.

When the doorbell rang – bringing back bitter memories – she was surprised. Immersed in her work, she had felt like she had only been settled for a few minutes but according toher phone it was actually forty-five. She took her dinner from the courier – a burger, chips and a half bottle of sauvignon blanc – and ate perched on the edge of the sofa while she worked, hoping the smell wouldn’t sink into the velvet and betray her presence here. The wine necessitated fetching and using one of his glasses but she grabbed the first she could find – a water tumbler on the side – rather than rummage through his cabinets. Stepping into his kitchen felt like stepping into his life, and she was resolved to stay well out of that now.

She balled herself up in the corner of the sofa, her legs tucked under as she sipped the wine and continued to trawl through the letters. For all his creative genius with a paintbrush, Trier had been no wordsmith and his letters were turgid and uninspiring. She read without interest, hoping that the next sheet, then the next one, would be the one to give her the break she craved.

But none of them were.

She flicked through an exhibition catalogue from a gallery in Aarhus, but it didn’t appear to be one he had exhibited in himself. Had he been a guest? Below was a sheaf of papers: more sketches, but they were watercolours this time. Botanical studies. Darcy frowned. Obviously, artists would explore different mediums and themes with varying levels of success, but these felt out of character for Trier as an artist: not just generally but at this juncture especially, where he had begun working more in oils than charcoals.

She spread them out on the cushions, hoping to get more of an objective overview. He had done A4-sized studies of lilac, marguerite daisies, European beech leaves, pedunculate oak...Marguerite daisies were Denmark’s national flower. Tokens of home? Had he been homesick?

And what did it matter anyway? It still didn’t give her a name.

She sank back in the sofa, staring mindlessly at the Liebermann on the opposite wall as she felt her hopes fade and her frustration rise. It was difficult trying to piece together the movements of a man from a hundred years ago by sifting through the dregs of his life. If he had been able to foresee that the complaining, banal letters he wrote to his mother would one day be used to judge him as a man, would he have made them better, brighter, kinder?

She was tired by the endless sitting and constant silence and, with a full stomach and drowsy with wine, her gaze began to grow heavier, sinking into the bold oil colours like toes in sand. She could feel herself almost disappearing into the paint. Escaping.

She was so weary.

She allowed her eyelids to close.

For just a minute.

Chapter Twelve

Darcy blinked. The lights were still on but a pervasive silence, inside and outside the house, gave her the distinct feeling it was the dead of night. She checked her phone with a gasp. One twenty-seven.

‘Oh my God,’ she gasped, sitting up and trying to orient herself. The botanical studies were still on the sofa cushions but several were creased from where her arm had fallen on them while she slept. She smoothed them as best she could. How long had she been asleep for? How could this have happened? She had to get home. She couldn’t behere.

And yet neither, she realized, could she simply just go.

Hurriedly she texted Jens and signed off the form, ready to hand over to him.

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