At least that’s what she’d told herself.
“And validation.” As she said the word, everything became obvious to her. Her thoughts fell neatly into place inside her head, as if she had just solved a crossword she’d been working on her entire life. “The kick of being popular. When I was most in demand, when all the invitations for appearances came flooding in, I got totally high on the whole thing.” She looked at him. “It made me feel accepted.”
“You and I are driven by different things. For me I guess being on TV is maybe some kind of revolt. For you it’s validation. And now that you know that, you can handle it in the right way.”
She nodded pensively. Didrik was also driven by passion. She was passionate, too, at least aboutthisproject, but she still didn’t know if that passion was worth everything that went with it. The reasons why she wanted to go on TV were complex. And possibly not entirely healthy.
On their way back to the hotel, Bente stopped walking and looked at Didrik.
“Hanna has invested in a wine bar, and she wants me to help her run it. Rendezvous.”
“Seriously? Wow!”
“Seriously! I think it could be really good.” She felt so happy, and at that moment she knew she wanted to run the bar. Somehow shewould make it work with the TV show. “Something occurred to me,” she went on. A nagging anxiety, a thought that she would have preferred to dismiss, but one that had taken root in her mind. “Sven finished up in a prison camp, and no one seems to know anything about Mathieu. If Sven and Mathieu were in a relationship ... what if they got caught? Is that why we haven’t found any more information?”
They looked at each other in silence. A homosexual couple who’d gotten caught during the time when the Nazis occupied Bordeaux.
Didrik didn’t say anything. Bente’s heart ached—she hoped she was wrong.
That night they made love slowly and tenderly, driven by a sense that they needed to make the most of what they had because nothing, not even love, could be taken for granted.
35
Jérôme’s care home lay between the city and Médoc, and consisted of a small building covered in pink plaster. Bente and Didrik strolled through a fantastic garden with a small white marble fountain bubbling away. Shortly after they entered the reception area, a nurse arrived and showed them to Jérôme’s room.
“I’m afraid Monsieur Fossey isn’t having a very good day today, but when we asked him yesterday, he said he’d be happy to see you.”
“I suppose it’s still worth a try,” Didrik said as they continued along the corridor. What else could they do, now that they were here?
“Your visitors, Monsieur Fossey,” the nurse said. A man with a cloud of gray hair was standing by the window watering some potted plants. He turned, and they saw dark-brown eyes behind his glasses, bushy eyebrows.
“My visitors?”
The nurse looked apologetically at Bente and Didrik. “I hope it goes well. Try asking your questions and see what he says.” She turned to Jérôme. “You wanted to see Bente and Didrik. Two young people from Sweden.” Bente couldn’t help smiling at the description. “They want to ask you some questions about your vineyard.”
Jérôme’s face broke into a smile. “My vineyard, how nice. It’s not for sale,” he chortled. Bente wasn’t sure if he was joking.
“We’re making a TV show,” Didrik explained, sitting down opposite the old man. “We have one or two questions.”
“We’re trying to find out who sent a bottle of wine—this one.” Bente took the empty bottle out of her bag and showed it to him. Jérôme screwed up his eyes and took a step back, as if he needed to look at it from a distance.
“I don’t recognize it.”
“No, we didn’t expect you to, but we think it was sent by a Swedish man, Sven Steen, toward the end of the war. He was at Château de Chênes—he arrived there in connection with the resistance movement in 1944.”
Jérôme looked at them. First Bente, then Didrik, with an expression that suggested he was wondering whether it was worth talking to them or not.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
Didrik cleared his throat. “What about Mathieu Latorre, the son of Juliette and Hugo, the couple you bought Château de Chênes from? Do you know if he stayed on at the vineyard after the war?”
Jérôme shook his head. “No, he was sent to Paris after he came home from the front, and I think he stayed there.”
Bente and Didrik exchanged a glance.
“Do you know of anyone from Scandinavia who was living in Bordeaux during the war?” Bente ventured.
Jérôme appeared to be thinking. He gazed out of the window for a moment, then looked back at her.
