The Dinosaur Feather

took time off work. Endless meetings, hearings and examinations followed. It was 1978. There weren’t many single dads in Denmark.’ He smiled quickly. ‘They had nothing to compare with. Finally, the case was decided. It set a precedent, in fact.’
    For a moment he looked proud. ‘You were allowed home. I felt terrible. I had let down Cecilie, and I had let you down, too. Physically, you recovered quickly. I fed you to the gills.’ He smiled. ‘We slept in the same bed at night and when you woke up . . . I looked into your eyes the whole time.’ He blinked away a tear. ‘To begin with, you wouldn’t look at me, but I won your trust. We would lie on the bed, gazing at each other for hours.’
    Anna was crying openly now.
    ‘I met with Cecilie’s doctor. Cecilie was suffering from severe post-partum depression, he told me. It wasn’t her fault. A woman’s hormones alter dramatically following childbirth, and it can trigger varying degrees of depression. Cecilie was badly affected. She had been prescribed medication and had started intensive therapy. For months she didn’t want contact with me or you.’ Jens sent Anna a look of infinite love.
    ‘I named you Sara. It means “princess” in Hebrew.’ He was silent for a moment, then he continued.
    ‘I was exhausted and miserable, but I coped. I bought a baby sling and carried you on my back when I started working again. I raised my desk, so I could write standing up. Of course, I couldn’t work as much as I used to, but we muddled through. You hung on my back babbling, waving your arms and kicking your legs. At times, it was quite distracting for my political analysis of the effect of the Cold War on European policy.’ He laughed briefly. ‘We had a new health visitor by then, the previous one having gone to Greenland. I remember the day she came to say goodbye. She was proud of me, she said. We stood in the doorway and she hugged me.
    ‘“You can do this, Jens,” she said. I knew she was right.
    ‘In the late summer Cecilie improved and began visiting us. She thought you were cute. She wanted to come home. Slowly, I began to hope. The medication made Cecilie tired and irritable, but the apathetic look in her eyes had gone, and it was wonderful to see her take an interest in you. You were happy, chubby and bore no grudge; on the contrary – you kept reaching out for Cecilie.
    ‘There were only two flies in the ointment. Cecilie was adamant that no one must know about her depression. She felt ashamed and demanded that I help cover up her shame. To explain her hospital stay, she wanted us to tell everyone that she had developed serious back problems after the birth. When the new health visitor came, I realised I had accepted Cecilie’s lie. I told her I didn’t have your records, even though the last health visitor had given them to me and asked me to pass them on. It was an easy lie. I burned your old records and started spreading the story about Cecilie’s bad back. Nine months had passed and, of course, people had noticed that something was amiss. We had friends, especially in Copenhagen, people we knew from college, but no one knew the truth. The first year with a new baby is tough, everybody knows that. When we were finally ready to visit friends and relatives again, we told them the story about Cecilie’s bad back and they understood. Everyone was sympathetic.
    ‘It was easy to lie at home in Brænderup, too. We had moved into the house shortly before you were born and it wasn’t until later, when things had improved, that we became a part of the local community – the main reason we had moved out there in the first place. Another year and wewould never have been able to keep such an illness a secret. It was as if it had never happened. Cecilie blossomed. Decorated the house and made new curtains. Enjoyed being a stay-at-home mum. That autumn you got a new name. That was the second fly in the ointment. Sara’s such a beautiful name. So is Anna, of course,’ he hastened to add. ‘But I was used to calling you Sara. For years I would call you Sara when no one was listening. Do you remember me suggesting it for Lily?’ Anna nodded. Jens seemed to have run out of words. Anna’s tears had dried and she didn’t know what to say. Jens gave her an anxious look as if he was aware that the jury was out.
    Anna said: ‘You’re a hard-nosed political analyst, feared and admired, and you’re so weak when it comes to Cecilie.’ Even she