‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to appear cynical. I understand what you mean,’ she said.
A gentle breeze from the street caused the flame of the candle on the table to flicker.
Birgitta told Harry about how she and her boyfriend had packed their rucksacks in Sweden four years ago and set off, how they had travelled by bus and hitched from Sydney to Cairns, slept under canvas and in backpacker hotels, worked there as receptionists and cooks, dived by the Great Barrier Reef and swum side by side with turtles and hammerhead sharks. They had meditated on Uluru, saved their money to catch the train from Adelaide to Alice Springs, been to a Crowded House concert in Melbourne and hit the wall in a motel in Sydney.
‘It’s strange how something that works so well can be so . . . wrong.’
‘Wrong?’
Birgitta hesitated. Perhaps she was thinking she’d said too much to this rather direct Norwegian.
‘I don’t really know how to explain it. We lost something on the way that had been there and we’d taken for granted. We stopped looking at each other and soon we stopped touching each other. We came to be no more than travelling companions, someone it was good to have around because double rooms were cheaper and tents safer with two. He met a rich man’s daughter, German, in Noosa and I kept on travelling so that he could continue the affair in peace. I didn’t give a shit. When he arrived in Sydney I told him I’d fallen in love with an American surf freak I’d just met. I don’t know if he believed me, perhaps he understood that I was giving both of us a pretext for finishing things. We tried to argue in the motel room in Sydney, but we couldn’t even do that any more. So I told him to go back to Sweden first and I would follow.’
‘He would have quite a head start on you now.’
‘We were together for six years. Would you believe me if I said I can hardly remember what he looked like?’
‘I would.’
Birgitta sighed. ‘I didn’t think it would be like that. I was sure we would get married and have children and live in a little suburb of Malmö with a garden and Sydsvenska Dagbladet on the doorstep, and now – now I can hardly remember the sound of his voice, or what it was like to make love with him, or . . .’ She looked up at Harry. ‘Or how he was too polite to tell me to shut up while I was babbling on after a couple of glasses of wine.’
Harry grinned. She hadn’t commented on the fact that he hadn’t drunk any of the wine.
‘I’m not polite, I’m interested,’ he said.
‘In that case, you’ll have to tell me something personal about you, other than that you’re a policeman.’
Birgitta leaned across the table. Harry told himself not to look down her dress. He sensed her aroma and greedily breathed in the fragrance. He must not let himself be duped. Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man.
She smelt wonderful.
‘Well,’ Harry began, ‘I have a sister, my mother died, I live in a flat I can’t get rid of in Tøyen, Oslo. I have no lengthy relationships behind me, and only one has left any marks.’
‘Really? And there’s no one in your life now?’
‘Not really. I have a few uncomplicated, meaningless relationships with women I occasionally ring if they don’t ring me.’
Birgitta frowned.
‘Something wrong?’
‘I’m not sure if I approve of that kind of man. Or woman. I’m a bit old-fashioned like that.’
‘Of course, I’ve put all that stuff behind me,’ Harry said, raising the glass of Perrier.
‘And I’m not sure I like these glib answers of yours, either,’ Birgitta said, raising her glass.
‘So what do you look for in a man?’
She rested her chin on her hand and gazed into the air considering the question. ‘I don’t know. I think I know more about what I don’t like in a man than what I do.’
‘What don’t you like? Apart from glib answers.’
‘Men who try to check me out.’
‘Do you suffer a lot?’
She smiled. ‘Let me give you a tip, Casanova. If you want to charm a woman, you have to make her feel unique, make her feel she’s being given special treatment, something no one else gets. Men who try to pick up girls in bars don’t understand that. But I suppose that means nothing to a libertine like you.’
Harry laughed. ‘By a few I mean two. I said a few because that sounds a bit wilder, it sounds like . . . three. One, by the way, is on her way back to her ex according to what she told me the last time I saw her. She thanked me because I had been so uncomplicated and the relationship had been so . . . well, meaningless, I assume. The other is a woman I started a relationship with and who now insists that since it was me who left, it is my duty to ensure that she has a modicum of a sex life until either of us finds someone else. Hang on – why have I gone all defensive here? I’m a normal man who wouldn’t harm a flea. Are you implying that I’m trying to charm someone?’