Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

The view is entirely different now, though the gray, as it happens, is exactly the same. The apartment on Ile Saint Louis - and the elusive agents immobiliers we argued with for months - have receded into the blurry mental space reserved for unfinished things.  We were so close this time finding our Parisian pied-a-terre. It was a small glass-roofed studio in an inner courtyard of a 17th century mansion, just steps from the Seine, where the noon light fell straight down through the panes and made you feel as if you would be living inside a lantern in the very heart of Paris.  We had practically measured the walls for books. But the dream of that apartment did not end just because of a failed negotiation. It dissolved the moment the phone rang on a Tuesday morning, pulling us twelve hundred kilometers north to this corner of Jutland. Now we are in Strandby - in the house belonging to Rita's mother. She is ninety-five, and she lives here alone - or she did, until a few d...