Page 6 of The Sleepwalker
Bernard Sand is in the kitchen, preparing an extravagant breakfast. He whistles to himself as he fries two potato cakes on a high heat. It is quarter past seven in the morning, and he is wearing a burgundy dressing gown. His salt-and-pepper hair is still tousled after a good night’s sleep.
Before he made the transition to becoming a full-time author, he was a professor of the History of Ideas at Stockholm University. Bernard writes romance novels, and has enjoyed international success with his series about the DeVille siblings.
After six books, he is ready to try something new.
It isn’t that he is bored, but he has started to worry that he is getting too comfortable as a writer.
He is currently working on his seventh book, and also writes a relationship column for one of the Sunday papers, answering reader questions.
The romance novels are how he makes a living, but they also generate a lot of work alongside the actual writing.
Yesterday, for example, he had to pore over a couple of contracts from his Dutch and Polish publishers. He then spent an hour talking to his Japanese translator. He has three email interviews he still hasn’t tackled, and a long list of requests for author visits and video messages from his agent.
Bernard is fifty-two, and has been living with his partnerAgneta for the past eight years. He has a seventeen-year-old son called Hugo from a previous relationship.
He is a tall, slim man with a pale face, intensely blue eyes and thick brows that need trimming every week.
The potato cakes sizzle in the pan, and he feels a sharp pain as a few droplets of melted butter hit the back of his hand.
Bernard serves the crispy cakes onto two plates and adds a dollop of crème fraîche whipped with lemon zest, dill and pepper.
The sun still hasn’t risen, and the kitchen is reflected in the dark windows like some sort of brightly lit theatre stage.
Agneta comes into the room with a subtle waft of perfume. She has just completed her morning breathing exercises, showered and pulled on a pair of jeans and a knitted sweater.
‘I need to be in the car in sixteen minutes,’ she says.
Her face is still flushed, her skin shimmering like bronze and tiny beads of water clinging to her short black hair.
‘New lipstick,’ says Bernard.
‘Well spotted.’
‘It’s very nice.’
‘Thank you, but if you think that’s all it takes for me to throw my arms around your neck and kiss you, then—’
‘Do it.’
‘You think so, do you?’ She smiles, but her face quickly turns serious. ‘God .?.?. I’m so impressionable. It’s just so easy to forgive you because—’
‘Sorry.’
‘Because my heart .?.?. my idiotic heart loves you,’ she says, taking a seat at the table.
‘I love you, too.’
She sighs and looks up at him with a frown. ‘I think you really do mean that .?.?. but as an author, you should know that it’s not enough just tosayyou love someone. You have to actually showit, too.’
‘I agree.’
Agneta Nkomo is thirty-seven and works as a freelance culture writer. She regularly reviews dance performances forSvenska Dagbladet, writes reports for a local news site and also carries out research for a popular true crime podcast.
She has lost count of the number of times she has asked the producer for a real part in the show, a chance to get behind the mic and discuss new theories and mistakes in the police investigations. She knows she could be great, but so far her requests have been met by polite surprise and hollow words about keeping her in mind.
Agneta met Bernard when she was commissioned to interview him about the film adaptation of his first book about the DeVille siblings. He was so busy that she had only thirty minutes with him, but that was all it took for them to fall in love.
Bernard’s hand starts to shake, and he waits a few seconds for it to settle before adding a heaped spoon of roe and some finely chopped chives to both potato cakes. He then carries the two plates over to the table and pours a couple of glasses of champagne, though he knows Agneta won’t touch hers.
