The Dinosaur Feather

Anna was nervous and thought her story sounded lame. A father and a daughter. Jens and Anna Bella. The mother hospitalised with a bad back, father and baby alone. Could Ulla recall them?
    ‘Ah. That’s no easy task.’ She laughed again and it sounded as if she was weighing up her response. ‘But I ought to remember,’ she continued. ‘Fathers and babies, there haven’t been many of them. It was mostly mothers. But then, back in the 1970s, there were quite a few. They had equality in those days,’ she quipped. ‘And Anna Bella, that’s an unusual name. Were you named after anyone?’
    ‘An apple, I think,’ Anna replied.
    ‘Hmm, it doesn’t ring any bells.’
    Anna’s heart sank. ‘Ah, well,’ she sighed.
    ‘Where did you live? Perhaps your address might trigger my memory.’
    ‘In the village of Brænderup, outside Odense. Hørmarksvejen was the name of our street,’ Anna said.
    A pause followed.
    ‘Yes, that’s right. I used to visit there all the time. All those communes. They kept having children.’ She laughed again. ‘But no, I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you.’
    ‘But it has to be you,’ Anna persisted. ‘We lived there, your name is in my health record book. It must have been you. I’m trying to find out something about that time, why my parents—’
    Ulla Bodelsen interrupted her. ‘Now I remember him!’ she exclaimed. ‘Your father. His name was Jens. He was a journalist, wasn’t he?’
    ‘Yes,’ Anna exclaimed. ‘That’s him!’
    ‘The poor man was under terrible pressure trying to work from home and look after a baby at the same time. It proved impossible, no surprise there, and as your mother was still in hospital, he decided to quit his job. You wouldn’t believe the state the house was in, and he was at the end of his tether from sleep deprivation and working too hard, so I supported his decision. We spoke regularly, until he called one day and said he didn’t need my help any more. I never found out why. I called him a couple of times, but he said everything was fine. I remember the child now. Gorgeous little thing, she was. She was dark and . . . you can’t shut me up now,’ she laughed. ‘Old people are like that when you allow them to wallow in the past.’
    Anna was confused. ‘The child,’ she said. ‘That was me.’
    Ulla went quiet, then she said, ‘No, she couldn’t have been you. The little girl was called Sara. I’m sure of it. My mother’s name was Sara, and when I was young I knew that if I ever had a daughter of my own, I would call her Sara. So, of course, I noticed every little Sara, I met.’
    Anna was gobsmacked.
    ‘So the name Anna Bella means absolutely nothing to you?’
    ‘No.’ Ulla Bodelsen was adamant.
    Anna felt like screaming. It couldn’t be true. The man, Ulla remembered, was Jens, Anna was sure of it! Brænderup, the communes, Cecilie’s absence, Jens who had to manage everything on his own, it
was
them! Her life. Her childhood. There was no Sara. Ulla Bodelsen had to be wrong.
    ‘Please may I visit you?’ Anna asked out of desperation.
    ‘But, child,’ Ulla Bodelsen said, ‘even if I am your old health visitor, I won’t be able to recognise you, it’s been almost thirty years. You’re a grown woman now, not a little nipper.’
    ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘I know, but perhaps you’ll recognise my daughter.’
    Another silence.
    ‘Of course you can come,’ Ulla said then.
    ‘As early as tomorrow?’
    ‘Tomorrow is . . . Friday? Well, that’ll be fine.’
    When Anna had ended the conversation, she was trembling.
    Who the hell was Sara?

     
    She wasted the next half hour on her computer. Googled something, tried to compose an invitation to her viva, but who was there to invite? She looked up Karen’s address on the Internet. This was something she did regularly, and every time the address came up as being somewhere in Odense. This time Anna’s jaw dropped when the search results appeared. Karen had moved and was now living in northwest Copenhagen, not far from Anna and even closer to the university! It had to be her. Karen Maj Dyhr. There could only be one person with that name. She stared at the telephone number for a long time. She twirled on her chair, looking around the room. Johannes’s computer was still missing, and the mess on his desk was unbelievable. She wondered why he hadn’t replied to her text about his computer being confiscated. If anyone had removed hers without asking, she would