Jenny turned her back to him and walked over to the sink, slowly poured herself a glass of water, and drank. What would happen if she told him about Henrik?

She turned back around.

“No. I didn’t suspect anything specific. If I had, obviously I would have told my sister.”

CHAPTER 21

At quarter to three, when the freshmen at Zahles School got up from their chairs and started scrambling out, Sara Saidani stood at the ready in front of Thomas P. Hejle youth center five hundred yards away. Grimy yellow buses rumbled past every minute, jogging the guilty conscience Larsen had managed to plant in her after all. Of course it was better for children to grow up somewhere green and peaceful, with vegetable gardens and neighbors who said hello. Her decision to move from Helsingør to Copenhagen had been about her career. She hadn’t taken the girls’ happiness into consideration, not really. Amina had been particularly upset about the upheaval, which had happened shortly after Mido moved back to Tunisia. Without a father, living in completely new surroundings—it hadn’t been easy for her.

Sara brushed the thoughts aside. Being a single mother meant living with the sword of doubt planted solidly in her heart. If she got stuck thinking about all the things she wasn’t doing well enough, she would never get anything done at all.

“Are you Sara?”

Sara turned around and saw a young face with no makeup, gray eyes, and a small button nose that she recognized from Iben Skytte’s Facebook page. The girl in front of her looked like the teenager she was: a searching young woman with eco-friendly labels on her clothes. And acne.

“Hi, Iben. Thank you for coming. How are you doing?”

Iben rolled her eyes sarcastically as if this were too serious a time to be asking something so shallow and light.

“Everything’s going to hell. How about you?”

There was an anger in her voice, controlled but clear. Sara read aggression in every cell of the fifteen-year-old girl’s body.

“I’m asking because I genuinely want to know, Iben. And I have plenty of time to listen to your answer.”

Sara could see from the girl’s response that she had said the wrong thing or maybe used the wrong tone of voice, spoken down to her without meaning to.

“If you really want to know, I’m going to hell, too. My older daughter pretty much won’t talk to me anymore. She and my boyfriend can’t stand each other.”

Iben smiled wryly, as if she appreciated Sara making an effort, even though she saw the underlying agenda. Sara had to be on her toes with this girl. She was sharp.

“Do you play table tennis?” Iben asked.

The unexpected question made Sara laugh.

“Uh, sort of?” Sara replied.

“Okay, then, come on!”