“Well, we wondered whether she might be a con artist, sure. You know, someone who reads international obituaries and tries to make money out of people’s misfortune. But she sent us a picture.”

“A picture?”

“Yes, a photo. Of the boy. When we saw him, we knew she was telling the truth. She offered to send us a DNA sample, but we had no doubts at all. He’s Christoffer’s son.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack. He’s fourteen years old now. A handsome boy.”

Heloise could easily imagine. With his bright-white smile and well-proportioned build, Christoffer Mossing had been almost a caricature of beauty. Not Heloise’s type, definitely not, but clearly someone all the overprivileged daddies’ girls north of Copenhagen would have lined up to date: young, wealthy, successful, and looking like a Greek god. The perfect eligible bachelor.

“Have you met Jack?” Heloise asked.

“Yes, he came to visit last summer. Before then we had been emailing, getting to know one another in writing, as you do, and then we bought him a plane ticket. We had to meet him.”

“What was that like?”

“It was …” Mrs. Mossing struggled to find the right words. “It was a nightmare, quite frankly. You can’t imagine what it feels like to lose a son and then meet a total stranger who looks like him, moves like him, speaks with his voice …”

“I’d rather think it would be like getting some of Christoffer back,” Heloise ventured.

“Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? But it felt more like my mind was playing tricks on me. My eyes were telling me that I was looking at something that wasn’t there at all. Like a cruel trompe l’oeil.”

“How did Jack react?”

“Oh, the poor boy didn’t know what to do with himself. I was falling apart, and he tried his best to help, but in the end, he went back home. We send him presents for Christmas and birthdays, and Johannes has opened an account with a considerable amount of money which he’ll get when he turns twenty-one. He’s our flesh and blood and we want what’s best for him. But it seems unlikely that we’ll see him again.”

Heloise was puzzled by Ellen Mossing’s frankness. It was as if there were no barriers between them. The woman acted as if she were talking to a close friend rather than a reporter. Heloise wondered if she was just lonely and caught herself feeling sorry for the woman.

The pickup needle on the turntable had gotten stuck in a groove, and Ellen got up and carefully lifted it from the record. She flicked through a pile of old records, picked one, took it out of the cover, and blew across it. Then she put it on, and Billie Holiday’s “All of Me” poured out of the speakers.