In the Name of Love by Patrick Smith Read Free Book Online

out of his mind. Anders would know women, of course. Women had always been drawn to him. Not so much because of his looks – he was a pleasant-looking man but not exceptional – as because of the quality of attention he paid to what they found important. Dan had many times witnessed how quickly and naturally women took to him. Growing up alone with his mother might have had something to do with it. Maybe it gave him an instinct that other men lacked. But Dan’s life was different now. And, simple though it was, it was miraculous compared with the way he’d lived through the year after Connie died. He had grown used to being alone. Quick fixes didn’t interest him. Nor did taking up old habits like tennis. He and Anders used to play every Saturday morning. Afterwards they’d go to a konditori for coffee. Anders was an easy man to talk to. Sometimes he’d break off to chat up a young woman sitting near by. It came easily to him and Dan could not recall a single instance of anyone taking offence. Phone numbers were sometimes exchanged but always for a practical reason, so Anders could pass on a useful address or some other information. Dan now wondered if he had been naïve all those years to think it just innocent talk. What were the rules for situations like that? How did you learn them? He’d been lucky – he’d met Connie when they were both young and he had never needed to develop the seduction techniques Anders mastered so effortlessly. But why go over such things now? It was something about Anders’s ease of contact with the pretty waitress in the Italian restaurant. Another woman attracted to Anders. And so…? But the ferry was in. He joined the queue and drove on board.

6
    Later that month, on one of his last shopping trips to Norrtälje, he walked round a corner in the centre of the town and came face to face with Madeleine Roos. They were so close they both had to draw back to avoid colliding. Startled, she said, ‘Oh it’s you.’
    ‘I’m here to finish off some shopping.’
    Her dark eyes were watching him, waiting for him to say something more. He asked her if she had time for a coffee. She gave a tiny movement of her head, a hardly visible ‘No’. Several seconds passed before she said she had to collect an elderly neighbour she’d driven in to the dentist.
    ‘She broke a tooth,’ she said. ‘This morning.’
    It was, of course, a pointless thing to say but her saying it somehow helped. They stood there in the middle of the pavement with people passing on either side. Then suddenly she said she had to go, and she did.
    He turned after a few steps and watched her walk away in her sensible shoes, with her back very straight the way Connie used to walk when she was carrying Carlos, though Madeleine Roos’s pregnancy was barely visible yet. As though sensing someone was staring at her she stopped and turned. Embarrassed, he swung away and hurried on into a crowd of noisy children.
    Then, another day, a Wednesday, when he was back to replace the last of his ruined clothes, he saw her again. This time she wore a dark grey maternity suit. Almost simultaneously they said what a coincidence it was, although, since the centre of the town was small and they were both shopping for clothes, they could hardly have missed each other. A group of kids walked past, all wearing much the same jeans and sneakers, girls as well as boys, most with diminutive rucksacks on their backs. She looked at them, observing their movements, and Dan wondered if she was thinking of the child she carried, how he or she would turn out. He even thought she was going to say something about it but when she looked back at him she tossed her head, as though all that was light years away. Wondering if he could invite her for a coffee again he said, ‘Well, we can’t stand here all day. How—’
    ‘No, of course not. I have to go, I have an appointment,’ she said and she walked on at once. This time he went after her.
    ‘Do you