The Dinosaur Feather

ever. Not on paper, not in real life. It would hurt Vibe deeply if the truth came out. Besides, he didn’t want to be a father, for Christ’s sake. Not to Vibe’s child, not to Katrine’s and certainly not to Bo Beck Vestergaard’s. It was completely out of the question. He had donated some sperm, that was all. It should never have happened. Katrine was supposed to have had her period and afterwards she was supposed to meet Bo, and they should have had a baby of their own. Why the hell hadn’t he used a condom? He stopped at Saint Jørgen’s Lake and kicked a low wall hard with his black leather shoe. When he had calmed down, he went to see Knud and Elvira.
    ‘It’s good that you’re here now,’ Vibe said quietly, as he entered the living room. At first he couldn’t see Elvira and, for a brief second, he imagined that she had got out of bed, fit and healthy, and gone out into the garden to pick elder-flowers, but then he spotted her. She was lying in a fold of the duvet – at least that was how it looked. Søren held her tiny frail hand and sobbed his heart out. Three hours later Elvira sighed softly and then she was gone.
    In the weeks that followed Søren tried to brush aside all thoughts of the baby. There was much to do. A complicated case at work, organising Elvira’s funeral and then there was Knud, who was falling apart with grief. When Bo called two and a half weeks later, he screamed furiously into the handset that they should fucking well leave him alone, he hadn’t asked to have a baby, and if Katrine could have been bothered to call him when she found out she was pregnant, he would have told her to get rid of it. Later that same afternoon, Søren rang Bo back to apologise. He explained his mother had died and that he was under a lot of pressure. To begin with Bo was distant and implacable, but as the conversation progressed, he softened.
    ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Call us when you’re a bit more on top of things. After all, there’s no hurry. Like we said, we would prefer not to have you hanging around. I’m sorry, but I’m being honest here. We just don’t want to lie to the child. She deserves to know the truth so she can have a secure childhood.’
    ‘It’s a girl?’ Søren marvelled.
    ‘Yes,’ Bo said. ‘And we’re calling her Maja.’
    Søren managed to visit Katrine once before she had her baby, one afternoon when he spontaneously drove past H.C. Ørstedsvej, rang the doorbell and found her home alone. They didn’t speak much, but she looked undeniably gorgeous on the sofa, big, round and enigmatic as though she was hatching a golden egg. Suddenly, he heard himself promise to keep his distance, as Bo and Katrine had requested, and that he would be there if the girl wanted to meet her father whenshe got older.
If
. They sealed the deal with a cup of coffee and, as there was nothing more to say, Søren left.
    Maja was born on 8 September 2004. Bo called him after Katrine had had the baby. He was rather monosyllabic and merely informed him that the child had been born and that mother and baby were doing well. Then he hung up. Three days later Søren went to Frederiksberg Hospital. He had been racked with doubt, but in the end he had been unable to stay away. He bought a teddy bear for the baby and a bottle of lemon-scented lotion for Katrine. The young shop assistant in the drugstore helped him choose it. In the hospital corridor he hesitated before he entered the ward. What if they had visitors, what if it was inappropriate? But, for God’s sake,
they
had chosen to involve him, so they had only themselves to blame. And anyway, he wasn’t some arsehole who just stayed away.
    To his surprise, the ward was nearly empty. There were no visitors and three empty beds waited for newly delivered mothers and their babies. Only the bed by the window was occupied, by Katrine, who was sitting with a faraway expression in her face. She looked up and smiled, almost as if she didn’t recognise him, then she lowered her eyes. Søren approached her gingerly and placed his presents on one of the empty beds. Then he saw Maja. She was absolutely tiny and swaddled in a white blanket. The teddy he had bought for her was five times her size. Maja’s hair was long and black and her face all scrunched up. She was the spitting image of him. Søren was lost for words. He looked at Katrine, then he leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

     
    Everything changed. Not because there was a child at