The Dinosaur Feather

broad-brimmed felt hat he wore against the merciless sun. Anna’s heart pounded inside her ribcage. She wanted him to disappear. Von Molsen watched her silently, just as lifelike as he had been in her dream.
    ‘If I wait long enough,’ she told herself, ‘the light will make him go away.’
    She knew she must be imagining this. She had to be. And yet she saw him just as clearly in the grey dawn as she saw the tall chest of drawers next to the door, the green vase on top of it, and the silhouette from the lilies she had bought yesterday and put in the vase.
    Later, when she looked back at this morning, she knew exactly what von Molsen was.
    He was an omen.

CHAPTER 2
     
    Monday morning, 8 October. The Institute of Biology was an H-shaped building squeezed in between the Natural History Museum and the August Krogh Institute in the University Park in the Østerbro area of Copenhagen. The main building was a narrow rectangle of four floors, which bordered Jagtvejen on one side and a cobbled square on the other.
    Anna Bella parked her bicycle outside the entrance to Building 12, which housed the Department of Cell Biology and Comparative Zoology on its second floor. It had been a ghastly morning. When she tried to drop off Lily at nursery, Lily had sobbed and refused to let go of her in the cloakroom. Through the window in the door Anna could see the other toddlers, see them fetch their cushions and get ready for morning assembly. Lily was inconsolable. She clung to her mother, smearing snot and tears into Anna’s jacket.
    Eventually, one of the nursery teachers came to Anna’s rescue. Lily’s sobbing grew louder. Desperation poured through the pores of Anna’s skin. She looked at the nursery teacher with pleading eyes and the nursery teacher lifted Lily up, so they could pull the snowsuit off her.
    Anna suffered from a permanently guilty conscience.Cecilie, Anna’s mother, looked after Lily almost all the time. Cecilie had volunteered her help six months earlier when Anna’s studies had become increasingly demanding.
    ‘If you’re to have any hope of finishing your dissertation within the allotted time, you can’t possibly leave the university at four o’clock every day to pick up Lily from nursery,’ she had argued.
    And that had been it. Lily loved her granny, Anna told herself, so why not? It was the obvious solution.
    For several months she had virtually worked around the clock, but though she had finally submitted her dissertation, she still had to prepare for her forthcoming viva. No matter how much Anna missed her daughter and knew very well that the temporary arrangement had got out of hand, there simply was no room for Lily in the equation. And as she kept telling herself: Lily liked being with Granny.
    ‘Stop it, Lily,’ she snapped. ‘I have to go now. Granny will pick you up today. You’re sleeping at Granny’s tonight. Now let go of me!’ She had to tear herself loose.
    ‘You go,’ the nursery teacher said, ‘I’ll deal with her.’
    When Anna had finished locking up her bicycle, she caught sight of Professor Moritzen in her office on the ground floor. Anna tried to catch her eye, but the professor was hunched over her desk and didn’t look up.
    Hanne Moritzen was a parasitologist in her late forties, and four years earlier she had taught Anna at a summer course at the university’s field centre in Brorfelde. One night, when neither had been able to sleep, they had run into each other in the large institutional kitchen that belonged to theEarth Sciences Department. Hanne had made camomile tea and they had got talking. At first the topic was biology, but Anna soon realised that Hanne, in contrast to other professors she had met, wasn’t particularly interested in talking shop. Instead they discussed favourite books and films, and Anna could feel how she was genuinely warming to Hanne. When dawn broke, they agreed it was pointless to go back to bed, and when the bleary-eyed kitchen staff arrived, they had just started a game of cards.
    Later they had bumped into each other at the faculty, said hello, exchanged pleasantries and eaten lunch together several times. Anna admired Professor Moritzen’s serenity and sense of purpose. It was a long time now since their last lunch. Once she had defended her dissertation, she would make it up to all the people she had neglected: her daughter, Hanne Moritzen, herself.
    Finally, Hanne looked up from behind the window, smiled and waved to