The Dinosaur Feather

have checked with me first.’
    When their conversation had ended, everything around Clive went black.

CHAPTER 15
     
    In 1975 Søren’s parents, Peter and Kristine, had rented a holiday cottage on the North Sea coast. Søren suddenly remembered the cottage. It was wooden and painted pale blue, situated in the corner of a vast plot, surrounded by tall trees. The beach lay a little further away with the fishing village beyond it. The accident happened one week into their holiday. Søren’s father was busy fixing the car and had stripped it of everything: wings, bumper, silencer. The sun came out and it was time for ice cream. The kiosk was only four kilometres down a tiny road, but they took the car because Søren’s mother wanted to come and she couldn’t ride her bicycle because she was heavily pregnant with Søren’s baby brother or sister. They only had one major junction to cross. They would be fine.
    The car was squashed into a cube when it hit the lorry. Søren didn’t die. His face was badly cut, he broke several ribs and suffered a concussion. It took the emergency team more than an hour to cut him free. Søren remembered nothing. Not the drop of sweat trickling down the nose of one of the ambulance men, the smell of coffee, the golden wheat swaying in the summer heat. Nothing. Blackout. His parents had sat in the front of the car, which was squashed flat.
    At the hospital, no one knew who Søren was or where he came from.
    The doctors and nurses asked him over and over, but he said nothing. He was in hospital for nearly three days and didn’t utter a word. Something terrible had happened, he was alone and he was five years old. It was important to be very quiet. Knud and Elvira hadn’t come, either. No one loved him.
    Knud and Elvira had no idea what had happened. They were attending a seminar in Finland. They weren’t at home when they heard the news, nor did Knud go out into the garden to tell Søren about the accident, like they had told him. It was a lie. They were in Finland.
    After three days, Søren said: ‘My grandfather’s called Knud Marhauge, he lives in a red house outside Ørslev in Denmark.’ After that, everything happened very quickly, a telephone call was made, a friend house-sitting for Knud and Elvira answered it, another call to Finland, and Knud and Elvira flew back to Denmark to pick up their grandson.
    When Vibe had finished her story, she looked anxiously at Søren. His arms hung helplessly by his sides and he stared at the candles in Vibe’s white ceramic candleholders, burning infinitely slowly on a bookcase in the living room. Søren had been playing in the garden when the accident happened! At the far end. Knud had come down to tell him. He remembered it, though he was only five years old and though they had moved to Copenhagen soon afterwards. The house outside Ørslev had been red, there were three apple trees in the garden and Elvira had a large barrel for collecting rainwaterinto which Søren would tip tadpoles he found in a nearby lake. Peter and Kristine had been on their way to Ørslev to pick him up when the accident happened. His grandparents had been looking after him for the weekend and he had been playing with a red car when Knud came down to him at the far end of the garden. Later, they had had ice cream. It wasn’t like Vibe had said.
    ‘Why did you keep it secret?’ he asked. His sweater was sticking to him, something was howling inside his head.
    ‘I’ve known since I was seventeen,’ Vibe said. ‘I’ve known it since the summer I saw the wedding photograph on the sideboard and discovered that Elvira and Knud were your grandparents. I was shocked that your real parents were dead. Dead! It was the first time I realised that you can lose someone you love in an accident. When I went home, I was beside myself. That night, when my mum said goodnight to me, I burst into tears. You had lost your parents and I was terrified of losing mine. I was seventeen years old,’ she defended herself. ‘I told my mum what Elvira had said. How awful it had been for Knud to find you in the garden and tell you about the accident. She had stayed in the house, slumped against the wall in grief. My mother hugged me and promised not to die.
    ‘The next time I was at the library, I couldn’t help myself. I looked up the accident on a microfilm. I wanted to see a picture of your parents, read about the accident, mourn the terrible fate my boyfriend had suffered,