She jumped on her bike and cycled home through the city, over Skeppsbron and up toward Slussen. The area around Hornspuckeln was busy with traffic and people on the move, on the way home orout for the evening. At the moment, not having a job to go to felt like something of a relief. Going back to Rendezvous wasn’t an option—it would be too humiliating. She was looking forward to simply cooking for Mom and Hanna, enjoying a glass of wine, and then working on her pitch for the meeting.
As she stepped into the hallway, she could hear her mother laughing. She and Hanna were sitting at the enormous kitchen island, whose top was one huge slab of stone. Agneta threw back her head, her red curls bobbing. She was holding a cocktail—a Manhattan.
Hanna poured bourbon into her own glass, followed by vermouth. She could mix that drink in her sleep. They both looked over when Bente walked in, and Hanna held up her glass. “Want one?”
“A cocktail for the cook—thanks.” Hanna took out a glass for her sister.
“Hi, Bente,” said a third voice. Bente spun around and saw her Aunt Lydia waving from the screen of her mom’s cell phone, which she had propped up against the vermouth bottle. In the background were Lydia’s built-in oak bookshelves in her house in Visby.
“Any luck with the job search?” Hanna asked.
Bente was tipping rice into the hot oil in the frying pan, but stopped mid-movement. Was there any point in telling the truth? On the other hand, she was too excited about the project to keep quiet.
Hanna handed her the shimmering red cocktail.
“I was actually working on something else.”
“Oh?” her mother said.
“A wine bottle from Bordeaux with an inscription in Swedish has been found in a shipwreck from the Second World War, and I think the story would make a good TV show.”
Her mother’s shoulders slumped. “TV?”
Bente nodded. “I’ve got a meeting with a production company next week. This story is totally unique—I think it could be great.”
“Sounds exciting,” Lydia said encouragingly.
Agneta managed a thin smile. “I’m sure it will be.”
Hanna didn’t appear convinced.
“I’m going to look for a job in the meantime, of course,” Bente added quickly. She didn’t want to appear ungrateful. She really appreciated her sister’s hospitality, but it wasn’t a given that Bente could live here indefinitely, and she absolutely didn’t want to do that. She had no intention of letting her sister support her financially.
“It’s not that,” Hanna assured her. “You can stay here as long as you like, it’s just ...” She trailed off. “This TV business ...” She didn’t need to say any more. Bente knew exactly what her mother and sister thought.
“I don’t even know if it will come to anything,” she said in an attempt to smooth things over. Although if it didn’t, she would be terribly disappointed.
“What about running your own business?” Agneta asked. “You’ve always dreamed of doing that, ever since you and Dad ...”
“I can’t just start up my own business.”
“That’s what your dad always said when I tried to encourage him.” Agneta took a sip of her Manhattan.
Bente didn’t answer. Instead she concentrated on adding white wine to the rice, which hissed and crackled. She didn’t like talking about her father. It wasn’t as if her family never talked about him; they had talked a great deal about him and everything that had happened. But certain memories were too difficult to revisit.
Saturday afternoons—a lasagna in the oven, red wine in a large glass on the kitchen counter. Dad sniffing the wine’s bouquet, allowing Bente to do the same before he started coming out with terms for it likesweaty horse—a phrase he’d picked up from Swedish wine connoisseur Carl Jan Granqvist’s TV showLiving Lifein the mid-1980s. He would add in words likeviolets,aniseed, andcherries—tastes and aromas that were easier for Bente to understand. And the whole time, he’d be listening to Bruce Springsteen, the smell of the lasagna spreading as Dad explained about French and American oak barrels. On those afternoons, he would sometimes talk about his dream of taking over a building in the area—anabandoned block of apartments or the run-down pizzeria—to open his own bar and restaurant.
Bente recalled feeling a sense of security during those days, but in hindsight, it also seemed that her father had kept up a kind of facade, for reasons she couldn’t understand. He must have hidden so many problems.
And yet his dreams had felt so real that he had often talked about them.
If he’d been able to do what he wanted, would he maybe still be alive? Would that have made him happy?
Bente turned her attention to chopping shallots. She had hoped for a little more enthusiasm from her mother and Hanna, although she did understand their unease. Bente had experienced the very worst side of celebrity, yet still she longed for it. She probably ought to ask herself why, but she didn’t want to reflect on it too much. She also sensed a niggling feeling of shame. The desire to be famous was ugly. What was wrong with her?
This situation might be different, though—she was meeting with the production company as the creator of a show, a producer. Of course she wanted to be in front of the camera, too, discussing wine—she had missed that. The chance to take the viewers on a dizzying journey through Bordeaux in each episode, revealing its wines and its history, was a dream. At the same time she would be searching for the origins of the bottle and the story behind it. This was a concept that could take her further, a 2.0 version of TV-Bente, more advanced than anything she had done before.
Throughout dinner, Bente’s project wasn’t referenced again. They shared a bottle of Chianti, although Bente suspected that her mother would probably have preferred to carry on drinking Manhattans. Lydia joined in, too, eating a bulgur wheat and chickpea burger.
