Page 134 of All I Want for Christmas

‘Exactly. Tensions might have escalated. There could have been a confrontation, or a fight...If Casper uncovered the truth about her and Arne, he might have threatened to fire him and send him away. Or worse, said he’d take the baby from them?’ Darcy blinked. ‘That would send any woman walking into the sea, much less one who had already lost a child. She would have had nothing more to live for.’

They were both quiet, thinking hard.

‘I agree it sounds plausible, Darcy, but without concrete proof...’

She nodded, knowing what he was saying.

‘Tell me more about the marriage. Was it a good one?’

She shook her head. ‘It was blighted by tragedy, and I’m not sure how close they ever were. There was a large age gap.’

‘Ah,’ he said knowingly. ‘Well, we all know those only ever fall in two directions: either they’re a great love story or a horror story.’

A horror story? Had it been?

If she stopped casting the Madsens as Lilja’s saviours, for just one moment; if she looked at the facts without that bias...Hadit been a marriage of convenience? A favour between two families...?

Or something altogether more sinister?

She had never found anything on Lilja’s marriage – not a wedding photograph, nor a letter of correspondence. Suddenly she understood why.

‘Oh,’ she gasped as another context was finally applied and the facts sifted in her mind, the heaviest settling at the bottom and underpinning everything.

‘Tell me.’

She looked at him. ‘I think it was a forced marriage. I think Casper sexually assaulted her and it was arranged to cover for the pregnancy that resulted.’

Otto frowned. ‘Elaborate.’

She closed her eyes, recalling what she had read. ‘He had come back from his war profiteering to find this beautiful, but very young, fourteen-year-old girl living with them...The Madsens threw a party that December...I think it probably happened then.’ She thought back, trying to remember the details of Lotte’s diary. ‘Lotte said that Casper danced with Lilja, gave them both champagne...she was distraught that her parents hadn’t returned from Germany; later on, Lotte said she could hear Lilja crying...Plus, he had been paying her undue amounts of attention before that.’ She remembered the car rides and the shopping trips.

‘And when was the child born?’

She bit her lip. ‘The end of August, but I think it was a premature birth. She had eclampsia – hence the complications to her baby. Her body was too young to cope with the pregnancy.’ She looked at Otto. ‘Casper was sent away to London, ostensibly to head up the Madsens’ growing business interests there. But what if they were keeping him away from her? Putting a lid on any scandal?’

‘London would be suitably far, without raising questions.’ Otto inhaled deeply, a sombre look on his face.

‘It might also explain why he appears to have been largely written out of the family legacy. There’s almost nothing on him. I think Helle would scratch him from the record altogether if she could.’

‘Indeed, it’s not at all the sort of thing they would want getting out. They’ve built their reputation on philanthropy andhigh-minded cultural ideals, and with the public listing in the offing, it’s a reputation stain they could do without.’

‘It makes sense, though, doesn’t it?’ she said, looking straight at him. ‘They covered up Casper’s crime by marrying Lilja to her rapist. No wonder she couldn’t recover! She was traumatized...Hornbaek must have felt like the only place she was safe.’

‘Except Casper went up there too.’

‘Yes, but only for very occasional visits. I suspect appearances would have needed to be maintained to some degree. They couldn’t let people start to talk...’

Darcy tried to imagine eighteen-year-old Lilja’s horror as her abusive husband came back into her life. Her bed.

A door opened at the far end of the room and Ida stuck her head around. ‘Ah, you are in here...Otto, your seminar group’s arrived. They’re in your office.’

Otto gave a small sigh. He looked at Darcy. ‘I’m sorry. Terrible timing. We’ll have to pick this up later.’

‘Sure.’ She looked at him. ‘But just tell me, is this making sense to you – or am I too close to it? Have I lost my perspective?’

He looked back at the portrait, Lilja watching them in painted silence as they conjectured over her fate. ‘Darcy, sadly, I think there was always going to be a dark reason why this painting was hidden behind another one. It was no accident that it was put there...These secrets have been kept for a long time – so keep going. We owe it to Lilja to tell her truth.’

Darcy watched him leave. Was he right? Did they owe it to Lilja to tell the world about her trauma, her love affair, her decision to leave a newborn baby to grow up without her mother? Was that to be her lasting legacy, immortalized for ever as a victim?

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