Amber squinted at her monitor as she read the tiny writing from the scanned documents. It had been a while since Walker Clay had done anything meaningful with the Lund collection.
They’d sold very well in the seventies and eighties, both as individual stories and in a large, decorative box set. But Walker Clay had done nothing further with the collection, and so it soon fell out of favour with the buying public.
She picked up one of the books on her desk and had a look at the thin, square hardback. The cover and design were dated but beautiful. It was obviously Scandinavian in design and felt like it had come from the turn of the last century rather than from the thirties. The simple illustrations were sparsely decorated in a watercolour style that she knew wouldn’t appeal to the readers of today.
She checked out Lund’s sales figures around the world. Copies were selling everywhere except the UK, where Walker Clay had stopped pushing them. Though, she could see why. The British market wasn’t one for nostalgia. New and exciting were the order of the day. Where some countries were happy to make do and mend, Britain had lost that mentality soon after the hardships of the War. Vast consumerism had taken over the country in the 1970s, and the movement had grown stronger with each passing decade.
Cute books that looked like they belonged on your great-grandmother’s shelf were not in. And people wanted things that were in.
She opened the book and flipped through the pages. Like a few of the others she had looked at, it seemed that the translation was off in a few places. Some of the words didn’t seem quite right, and the occasional sentence didn’t exactly make sense. Something that would never have happened these days.
Her phone rang. She looked up and saw a long number of the screen, denoting an incoming international call.
“Amber Tate,” she answered.
“Hello, this is Stine Persson, you emailed our office about the Charlotte Lund collection?”
Amber detected only a slight accent and breathed a sigh of relief that Stine’s English was so good. Often when dealing with translation rights she had found herself trying to have a conversation with someone who spoke no English whatsoever. It was always a gamble when taking on these kinds of projects.
“I did, yes! Thank you so much for calling me back. I understand that you hold the rights for the original Charlotte Lund collection?”
“That’s right, we manage all the Nordic languages from this office. You’re looking to reacquire the English rights, yes?”
“We are. I think I need to speak to Emilia Lund, Charlotte’s granddaughter, for that, is that right? I tried her agent, but—”
Stine’s laughter cut her off. “Magnus is in his nineties. He was Charlotte’s agent, and Emilia never replaced him.”
“Wow, so… there’s no point in talking to him then?” Amber picked up her pen and swiped through Magnus’ name and contact details that she’d written on her notepad.
“None,” Stine agreed. “You’ll need to speak directly with Emilia. But that is not easy, she doesn’t really speak to anyone. Not even to us.”
Amber had found some articles in Swedish newspapers regarding the elusive Emilia Lund. Google Translate had thrown up words like hermit, not a good sign.
“Yes, I’d heard that she is hard to get hold of,” Amber admitted.
“Very. She lives just outside of Malmö, in the south of Sweden. She doesn’t have a telephone, landline or mobile. And no access to the Internet either. We send her royalty cheques by post and also communicate by post if we need to. I can provide you with that address if you like?”
“That would be great.” Amber jumped on the offer. She’d read some of Peter’s notes and quickly realised that getting hold of Emilia Lund was going to be very hard work. While unusual, a home address to send a letter was a great start.
Stine gave her the address, helping with the spelling and telling her which letters had dots and circles above them. Amber didn’t want to get off on the wrong foot by writing an o when an ö was required. She knew from experience that the smallest variation could change a word’s meaning, and she had no desire to insert an unsavoury word into the middle of Emilia Lund’s home address.
“Good luck, she’s not… easy to deal with,” Stine said.
“It sounds it,” Amber confessed. “Thank you so much for all of your help.”
She ended the call and looked at the address she had jotted down on her notepad. She’d been to Malmö once before, on a weekend trip with an ex-girlfriend who wanted to see a concert being held there.
It was a modern city, a little industrial, but still firmly rooted in present. It had trams and excellent mobile service. Every bus stop she saw had real-time electronic arrival boards.
So, she knew for a fact that the lack of technology adoption wasn’t Malmö or Sweden, it was Emilia Lund herself. The woman had chosen to live her life with no telephone or Internet.
Just the thought of such a thing caused Amber to shudder slightly. She couldn’t imagine being without her phone. She was on it all the time, checking the weather, adding plans to her calendar, checking social media, taking photos. The idea of being off the grid was so extremely foreign to her. Certainly never something she’d choose.
“Do you want me to throttle a pigeon?” Tom asked.
She looked up at him, frowning.
“To get you a feather, so you can handwrite a note to Lund… you know, old school.”
She glared at him. “Shut up, Tom.”
She opened Microsoft Word and started to type in the address from her notepad. Emilia Lund might be stuck in the dark ages, but Amber hadn’t written a letter by hand since she was five and asked Santa for a horse. She wasn’t about to start again now. Besides, if she did handwrite the letter it would probably be unreadable. Best to leave it to the professionals, in this case to a word processor and a printer.
Her eyes drifted to the date on her computer. With two weeks to go until Bronwyn’s deadline, and Amber having to resort to sending a letter through the post, it was looking increasingly unlikely that she was going to complete this task.
What kind of lunatic doesn’t have a phone? she wondered and then got to typing.