Chapter 1

When I first moved away from home, I had never thought my new neighbours would have so much impact on my life. I had to move to the city when I finished school. A future as a farmer was not something that ever appealed to me, and besides, my older brother was the one who was going to take over the farm when Dad retired. I had good grades and wanted to become an accountant.

I was lucky to get a very small and cheap apartment: a bedroom, a living room that normally would have been categorised as a small chamber, a kitchen hardly larger than a closet, and a bathroom the size of a phone booth. Everything got wet when I showered. It was extremely cramped, especially as I came from a big farm with plenty of space, but it was also great because it was my own place. I moved in on a Saturday. Dad had an old VW, and I didn’t have more than it could take in one load. My brother was there, too, to help.

Even though I didn’t have much, what I had was heavy and was going up to the third floor where my flat was. There were three flats on each floor: one other the same size opposite mine, and one larger flat in the middle. It didn’t take long to find out who lived in the flat opposite to mine. On my way up the stairs at one end of my sofa, an old lady appeared in the doorway.

“My god, you are pulling a heavy load. I can’t offer you a beer, but how about a cup of coffee when you’ve got that one up?” she said.

“Thanks. That sounds nice,” I politely replied.

“Are you the young man moving in?” she asked.

“Yes,” I gasped, pulling the sofa up and to the side to get it angled in through the door.

“I’m your new neighbour, Mrs. Larsen.”

Then she realised that I was too heavily loaded to exchange courtesies.

“Oh, silly me! I’ll go make the coffee, and you just come in when you’re ready.”

She shuffled into her flat, and my brother and I finally managed to get the sofa in through the door.

“Great!” my brother grinned, while trying to catch his breath. “You already got a girlfriend.”

“Come on! She’s just being polite,” I protested.

“Little brother, little brother. You’re so easy. I was only teasing you.”

Dad came in with a box.

“We’ve been invited for coffee by Eric’s new girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Dad said, looking very puzzled.

“My neighbour, not my girlfriend. He’s just sooo funny.”

We had coffee and cookies. It was a bit formal, mainly because my dad did the best he could to convince everybody that he had very good manners, which he had, but he has always had a kind of hate/respect thing with city people. My brother and Dad had to get back early, so Mrs. Larsen invited me to dinner as well. I was reluctant to accept, considering the generosity she had already extended, but practical considerations intervened: I did have food, but if I was going to cook anything myself, I would have to unpack both my pots and pans, and the cookbook my mum had given me, before I could start cooking. Back home, Mum always cooked, and what I knew about cooking was what I had learned in the school kitchen, several years back. In short, I accepted her invitation.

I was a bit nervous when I stood outside her door after a shower and in clean clothes. My Dad had made me promise to put on a tie. I hadn’t worn one since granddad’s funeral four years ago.

“My God, how stylish. Did I really scare you that much?” Mrs. Larsen burst out when she opened the door and saw me standing there in my Sunday best.

“No. I mean, my Dad, you know. He thought I should put it on,” I said and tugged the tie.

“I think you should take it off and relax. I’m not all that bad. And do come in.”

Mrs. Larsen was actually very easy to talk to. I’ve never been good at small talk. I never know what to say, and if I start talking about something that interests me, I’m afraid I’ll bore people to death within minutes. We had a simple but very nice dinner. Mrs. Larsen wanted to know about my family, where I came from, and why I had moved to the city. I told her I was going to study to be an accountant.

“My late husband was an accountant.”

She said it without any hint of sadness in her voice. I think she saw the question in my eyes.

“No, he’s been dead for a long time. 29 years. His heart was weak, and he didn’t listen to the warning signs. It took a while to get used to being alone, but 29 years is a long time, and time does heal the wound.”

“Didn’t you have any kids?”

“We had a son. He would have been 60 this year. He died in a car crash two years after my husband’s death. That was harder to get over,” she sighed. “But I got over that, too. I had to, didn’t I? I had good friends that helped me.”

I didn’t feel like asking more about her family, but she apparently sensed it and changed the subject.

“I moved to this place because this was where I grew up,” she said and smiled. “It might not be the best neighbourhood, but I feel comfortable here. And it’s close to the city centre and the shops. Mind you, nowadays, I would have chosen a flat on the ground floor. It’s so heavy to carry everything up here.”

“You can just make a shopping list, and I’ll get it for you,” I offered. I was brought up to help whenever I could.

“No, you’ll be much too busy, and I don’t want to be any trouble for anyone.”

“No problem. I’ll have to shop anyway.”

It was pretty late before I got back, and I’d had a really pleasant evening. I was too tired to bother making the bed, so I just slept on the mattress with a blanket.

I spent all Sunday unpacking and didn’t get out of the flat at all. Monday I went shopping. After a bit of polite protesting, Mrs. Larsen had given me a shopping list with the heavy items she couldn’t carry herself: six bottles of red wine, quite expensive, potatoes, and things like that. On my way up again, I met my other neighbours in the centre flat: Mr. and Mrs. Petersen and their daughter Sophie. Mr. Petersen - Arnold — was a man around 40 with short, grey hair, dressed in a grey business suit. Mrs. Petersen - Amy — was very thin and she struck me as very fragile, even though I can’t say why. She looked as if she was much younger than her husband, but it was hard to tell. Her hair was black, probably dyed, considering the way it shined.

Sophie was a skinny little girl, very fair, with hair that was almost white. She was dressed in a light summer dress, which looked a lot like the ones that the girls in my class wore ten years ago, and her hair was set up in two plaits. Dressed the way she was, she didn’t look like she was more than nine. The Petersens were on their way into the flat, and I was loaded with heavy groceries, so we only just said hello.

I started school and got into a rhythm. The first three months or so, my best friend was actually Mrs. Larsen. It may sound boring, but it wasn’t. I’m not an outgoing person, literally, and at the same time, I didn’t feel I had too much time, having to do my homework. We often ate together. At first, it was always her cooking, but when she found out that I could hardly boil an egg, she began to teach me about cooking. I quickly became a very good cook and began to prepare very advanced dishes. Mrs. Larsen also liked her glass of red wine, and she taught me a bit about that too. Back home, my parents practically never drank wine, and when they did, it was always very sweet wine. The wine Mrs. Larsen introduced me to tasted quite different, and it took a while before I got used to the much more sour taste.