Page 121 of All I Want for Christmas

‘I can see why,’ she murmured. ‘It’s heavenly here.’

He didn’t reply. It didn’t need to be spelled out why there had been no weddings since.

They came to a room at the end of the corridor. It was smaller than the others, with a window set in the back wall that looked down the drive towards the clumps of silver birches and the beach beyond. There was an iron bedstead, a faded flat-weave rug, a small desk. And in the nearside corner was a large easel, grubby with paint marks.

‘This was Johan Trier’s room, when he stayed here,’ Max said, looking in dispassionately. ‘Out of all the rooms, it’s probably the one that’s been touched least. I suppose we were always too aware of the importance of the connection with him to dare doing much in here.’

Darcy felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. ‘You mean, this is where he stayed while he was paintingHer Children?’

He nodded.

‘And you didn’t think that would be of interest to me?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s just an old bedroom.’

Was it though? She paused for a moment, realizing, for the first time, that the connection between Trier and the Madsens really was something more than just an academic fact or commercial advantage. Johan Trier had slept in that bed; he had woken in this room...He had created the greatest work of his lifetime, and of Denmark’s past century, while staying right here. Suddenly Max’s argument thatHer Childrenbelonged at the Madsen Collection didn’t just feel like legal jousting or good PR prior to a public listing. He might actually have a point.

She felt a green shoot of hope break through the frozen ground. The past was stirring...

‘Which was Lilja’s room, do you know?’ she asked, looking back down the hallway.

‘We’re not quite sure, but we think probably Peder’s. It was the smallest, and as Casper was the younger brother too...’ His jaw pulsed, as if he was pained by the logic of the younger brothers always receiving less. Smaller room. Smaller real estate.

Darcy tried to imagine Lilja sleeping down the hall, her new baby in the cot beside her...August 1922. She had been living here for two years by then; what had been a temporary suggestion to recuperate from her bereavement had gradually become a new life. She had recovered here and never gone back to the city. Her husband – working in London – and in-laws had been infrequent visitors; so how had she felt about having a newcomer – a brilliant, famous artist – sleeping down the hall? Had it been an intrusion? Or a welcome return to wider life?

‘Were there staff?’

‘Yes, the Saalbachs. Mrs Sally, as she was known, was our cook and housekeeper, and her husband and son, Ernest and Arne, were the gardeners-slash-drivers.’

‘Old Sally and Little Sally. Viggo’s mentioned them.’

‘That’s right. Although Little Sally was six foot three, so that was something of a misnomer.’

‘And where did they sleep?’ she asked, counting that there were five bedrooms up here.

‘There used to be a small staff lodge house, where the garage now stands.’

‘Ah.’ So not in the main house, then. ‘And did Trier have a studio here?’

‘Yes, also long since gone. It was more of a glass lean-to at the back of the house. It was supposed to give him lots of natural light but it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.’

She looked back in at Trier’s bedroom again. ‘May I?’

‘Sure.’

She stepped in, looking around carefully and trying to observe her own reactions to what she saw and felt. It felt as if she was trying to inhale the past – as if Trier had left something of himself behind in here that she could capture. She was looking for something, but she didn’t know what.

There was another old photograph on the wall. This one was sepia-toned and mottled with dust mites trapped between the paper and the glass, so that small dark patches bloomed in several areas. But she knew immediately who she was looking at. Johan Trier was standing by his easel. He was as recognizable by his long, pointed beard as by his painter’s smock, a paintbrush held upright in his hand like Cruella de Vil’s cigarette holder.

To his left stood a man in a pale suit and tie. He had an imperious look about him, with a neatly trimmed beard and his chin up as he gazed straight towards the camera. His hand rested on the shoulder of a young woman beside him. She was holding a baby wrapped in a blanket and was barefoot, her dark hair worn in a braid. To the right of the easel stood another two men – one middle-aged, the other young; unlike the bearded fashion of the day for gentlemen of the upper classes, they were clean-shaven and their clothes cut from hemp. Slightly in front of them stood a middle-aged woman in a dark dress and pristine apron, her hands clasped before her.

‘That’s the Sallys,’ Max said, as Darcy peered at the image. ‘Johan, obviously...And as you’ll no doubt recognize, my great-grandparents, Casper and Lilja. She’s holding my grandmother there.’

She was also wearing the necklace. It was a clean, clear image and Darcy took a good look. There was no longer anydoubt at all that the necklace was Lilja’s, nor that it was her in the painting. Her head was tipped at the same angle – chin sightly down, lips parted, gaze up.

‘What did you say was your grandmother’s name?’ she asked, her gaze settling on the baby bundled in Lilja’s arms.Two births.

‘Emme.’

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