“Of course. Camilla made coffee.”
“Thanks.” Tilberg got himself some coffee, and sat where Camilla had been until a few minutes before. He looked down at the coffee, then up at Finn, his eyes verging on pleading as he said, “I had no idea, I swear.”
Finn shrugged. “It’s nothing to me, but for what it’s worth, maybe you should have been more careful, looked for the signs—they were there.” Tilberg looked confused. “I saw your Facebook page, Anders. You have a lot of friends on there who are also at Uppsala University—does Hailey have any other friends at the University of Geneva?”
“But she explained that. She was having trouble making friends there—that’s one of the reasons she came to visit.” It was interesting to hear him speak, as if he still wanted to believe that her story was true.
“Any Facebook friends from back home in America?” He didn’t wait for an answer this time. “Look, I’m just saying you should have been more careful. I don’t know what the law is here, but in some countries you’d be in a whole load of trouble right now, and it wouldn’t matter that she’d lied to you.”
“Actually, it’s legal here, but she just told me she only became fifteen last month. You know, she talked about coming here before Christmas, and then it would have been . . .” He shook his head, briefly repeating the gesture of covering his face with his hands, sighing through them and then saying, “I completely believed her.”
“Well, if no law was broken and her parents don’t want to take it further anyway, I’d just put it down to experience. And maybe choose your next girlfriend from among your fellow students. You know, I just had coffee with a very attractive young lady.”
Tilberg laughed, as if the suggestion of Camilla as a girlfriend was clearly a joke, then looked downcast again as he said, “I should have known it was too good to be true.”
Finn had nothing more for him, so he waited a couple of beats and said, “This is a pretty nice house by student standards.”
Tilberg looked thrown for a second, but looked around the kitchen and said, “Oh, yes, it belongs to my family.” He smiled. “And on the subject of family, the attractive lady you had coffee with is Camilla Tilberg, my cousin.”
That explained the bemused response to Finn’s comment.
“And is that legal here?”
Tilberg laughed properly, then looked curious. “Did you say your name was Harrington? Are you any relative of Charles Harrington, the historian?”
If nothing else, this trip had done wonders for Finn’s ego as a writer.
“I am Charles Harrington—Finn is just what people call me.”
Tilberg looked amazed, the whole situation forgotten as he said, “I read your book on the Black Death. It was really great. I’m a history student.”
“Thanks. I didn’t think my books would be considered academic enough to appear on university reading lists.”
“No, they’re not. I read it for myself. Actually, I bought it in London when I was there, in Foyles. But I really enjoyed it.”
“I appreciate that.”
“What are you working on now?”
“The Cathars, though I haven’t done much this last week—what with trying to find Hailey and, you know . . .”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be, I’ll get back into it soon enough.” Though not yet, he thought, because finding Hailey wasn’t the end of his search.
There was a shuffling noise on the floor above—what sounded like a backpack being dragged. Tilberg looked ready to get up, but thought better of it and stayed in his seat, and the two of them listened to her progress down the stairs. She left the backpack in the hall and appeared in the kitchen doorway.
Even with the fashionably short hair and the student clothes, she looked very much a schoolgirl to Finn, and he couldn’t understand how the people in Fate or Tilberg and his friends had been fooled by her. And that in turn reminded him of Katerina all those years before, and he realized that some people just wanted to be fooled.
Hailey looked at Tilberg, her eyes a little red, but he stared resolutely at his coffee and she gave up and turned her attention to Finn, meeting his gaze.
“Hello, Finn.”
“Hello, Hailey.” He turned to Tilberg. “Anders, could you call us a taxi?”
“Of course.” He reached into his pocket for his phone, and crossed the kitchen as he searched for a number.
Hailey came across to the table, looking lost. Idly, she picked up Tilberg’s mug and drank some of his coffee, and in that one simple action Finn saw how she’d fooled them all. There was something sophisticated and worldly about it, like a woman who’d seen life, and the best and worst of what it could throw at a person.