Saturday night was all right for a fightback as Belgium marmalised Romania to come back from their shock opening defeat to leave Group E all square. The Red Devils will now surely fancy themselves to qualify for the knockout stages but after a performance that was scintillating, if not without flaws, the question will be quite how far they are able to go.

Any conversation around the match will probably centre on the continuing idiosyncrasies of VAR, after Romelu Lukaku had a third overturned goal of the tournament decided by the tip of a knee. It may even centre on the apparently cursed nature of the striker himself, who again spurned a series of chances. But the focus ought to be on an electric performance by Domenico Tedesco’s side. Youri Tielemans opened the scoring after 73 seconds and Kevin De Bruyne wrapped up the match after 80 minutes, yet in between there was so much to admire.

Tedesco was in pragmatic mood and appeared to display some frustration at his team’s inability to kill the game earlier. Belgium had 20 shots and nine on target but could have been hauled back to parity had Romania managed their own opportunities better. “We are very relieved that we won the game and it was very important to get those three points,” Tedesco said. “But of course we missed one or two chances and I am not happy about that. It would be great if we could have won the game earlier.”

The Belgium manager has insisted he was happy with his side’s performance in the opening game, a 1-0 defeat to Slovakia in the only real shock of the tournament. He switched his personnel up for this encounter, however, making four changes including restoring Jan Vertonghen to defence and adding the more progressive Tielemans alongside Amadou Onana in midfield.

It made a quick difference. The move for the opening goal began with Lukaku driving deep into Romanian territory. He laid the ball off to De Bruyne, who in turn found Jérémy Doku, who dinked across the edge of the box before finding Lukaku again on the penalty spot. The striker held off his man, saw Tielemans approaching and gently laid the ball to his feet for the Aston Villa midfielder to drive low under the dive of Florin Nita.

It was beautiful, graceful, football with a little bit of oomph for good measure, and Belgium continued in the same vein for the rest of the match. At the heart of much of their good play was Doku.

Restored to the left side – his customary position when marauding for Manchester City – he was at times unstoppable. He dropped deep, held the ball, span and ran. He hung on the shoulder of the full-back and ran beyond him. He was almost impossible to shake off the ball.

Then there was De Bruyne, who was at his impish best. An incredible, Kaká-esque run through the heart of the Romania midfield set up the impressive right winger Dodi Lukébakio for a great chance on the half hour but Nita turned the ball round the post.

Just after the hour the Belgian captain’s slide rule pass sent Lukaku clear to finish calmly into the bottom corner, only for VAR, in its own time, to intervene.

Finally with 10 minutes to go De Bruyne pushed himself on to the Romania defence before a goal kick cleared everyone and he poked the ball past Nita to score. “We had a couple of balls that came up front and no one was really running into the spaces, so I thought I would go”, he said.

As for Lukaku, he has more goals overturned than the competition’s leading scorers have actual goals. As in his previous appearance, he passed up a series of presentable chances too. But there is no doubt that Belgium could not have played as they did without their record scorer on the field. His hold-up play, connection with his teammates and dominant physical presence were a major influence.

As a jubilant Belgium support at the end of a raucous match cheered their team in victory, their hopes must surely have turned to going deep in this tournament.

Not many teams can match the verve Belgium showed, and the mood around the team has just performed the mother of all 180s. “Our mentality tonight was good,” Tedesco said.

Water companies in England and Wales have averaged five serious sewage spills into rivers or seas every day over the past decade, the Observer can reveal.

Analysis of Environment Agency data has found that the 10 firms recorded 19,484 category 1-3 pollution incidents between 2013 and 2022, the most recent year recorded, an average of one every four and a half hours.

Campaigners accused the water industry of “polluting our rivers and seas at a catastrophic scale”, while Labour said the government had “folded their arms and looked the other way” as the crisis worsened.

Thames Water was the worst offending company according to the Environmental Performance Assessments analysed by this newspaper, recording some 3,568 incidents in that time, followed by Southern Water (2,747), Severn Trent (2,712) and Anglian Water (2,572).

Most of the incidents recorded were category 3, the least severe of those collected and a type that is supposed to have only a localised effect.

But the figures are also likely to be an underestimate. The number and severity of sewage spill incidents are self-reported by water companies themselves.

The incidents, and their actual severity and impact, often go unverified. The Environment Agency, which regulates the sector, has faced staff shortages and major budget cuts that have forced it in the past to tell its inspectors to not investigate less serious incidents in order to cut down on costs.

Between 2020 and 2022, there were reportedly 931 pollution incidents in the north-west of England, but the EA attended just six.

A BBC investigation last year into the area’s water company, United Utilities, found that it had wrongly downgraded the severity of a significant number of its own sewage spills to lower categories, with the result that it avoided potential further scrutiny from the EA.

The state of the UK’s rivers and seas has become a major campaign issue in the general election.

Labour’s shadow environment secretary, Steve Reed, told the Observer that the Conservative government had “just folded their arms and looked the other way while water companies pumped a tidal wave of raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and seas”.

He said that Labour, if elected, would give regulators the power to ban bonus payments and even levy criminal charges for “law-breaking water bosses”.

The Liberal Democrats’ environment spokesperson, Tim Farron, whose rural Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency is one of the 25 worst affected by sewage releases, said the issue was a “national scandal which has gotten worse and worse under the Conservatives’ watch”.

“The Conservatives’ record is one of rising sewage levels and water firms stuffing their pockets with cash,” he added. “The Liberal Democrats have led the campaign against sewage, with plans for a new water regulator, an end to disgraceful bonuses and profits, and new sewage inspectors.”

In March it was revealed that England’s privatised water firms released raw sewage for a total of 3.6m hours in 2023, more than double the scale from the year before.

A small number of untreated sewage releases are allowed during periods of unprecedented rainfall when sewerage systems are overwhelmed, but a recent BBC investigation found thousands of “illegal” releases on days when it hadn’t rained, including during a record heatwave.

Despite the growing scrutiny of the industry in recent years, the pay packets for its leadership have remained high, with the nine chief executives of UK water companies receiving more than £25m in bonuses and incentives since the last general election. That has included bonuses awarded for hitting environmental and sustainability targets.

“This is further evidence of what we’ve all long suspected: water companies are polluting our rivers and seas at a catastrophic scale, each and every day,” said Giles Bristow, the chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage.

“These companies are brazen in their lack of regard for the law and have been allowed to pollute with barely more than a slap on the wrist.”

A Conservative spokesperson said the government had been clear that “water companies need to be held to account” and that they had “introduced unprecedented levels of transparency with 100% monitoring, and applied the largest ever fines to law-breaking water companies”.

A spokesperson for Water UK, the organisation that represents water companies, said that numbers of the most serious pollution incidents had fallen over the last decade, and stressed that the industry plans to invest £100bn into its network that will come into action once it receives approval from the regulator, Ofwat.

The husband of a bride who was killed in a South Carolina beach road crash on their wedding night last year will receive nearly a million dollars in a financial settlement connected to the wreck, which a drunk driver allegedly caused.

The Post and Courier reported that Aric Hutchinson will receive about $863,300 from Folly Beach, South Carolina, bars the Drop In Bar & Deli, the Crab Shack and Snapper Jacks; Progressive auto insurance; and Enterprise Rent-A-Car, according to a settlement approved earlier this week by the Charleston county circuit court judge Roger Young.

Hutchinson sued the businesses after driver Jamie Lee Komoroski crashed a rented car into a golf cart carrying him and his new bride, 34-year-old Samantha Miller, away from their wedding reception on 28 April 2023.

The golf cart was thrown 100 yards (91.44 meters). Miller died at the scene, still wearing her wedding dress. Hutchinson survived with a brain injury and multiple broken bones. Komoroski was driving 65mph (104.6km/h) on a 25mph road, the newspaper reported.

Hutchinson claimed in the wrongful death lawsuit that Komoroski had “slurred and staggered” across several bars around Folly Beach before speeding in her Toyota Camry with a blood-alcohol concentration more than three times the legal limit.

The settlements amount to $1.3m but will total less than that after attorney and legal fees are paid.

Komoroski is out on bond as her case makes its way through the court system. In September, she was charged with felony driving under the influence resulting in death, reckless homicide and two counts of felony driving under the influence resulting in great bodily injury.

In March, the New York Post obtained a recording of a jail house telephone call during which Komoroski told her sister she expected to soon “be living [her] best life” despite facing up to 25 years in prison if convicted as charged.

“It’s so funny because when you’re in a bad situation, you’re so upset and you’re distraught,” Komoroski said on the call on 8 October, according to the Post. “But in the future when you see your future self looking back at that time, you wish you could tell yourself in that moment: ‘Stop freaking out, stop crying, it’s going to be OK. You’re happy now. And there’s no point being so upset. Everything is going to work out.’

“No matter how bad it is in the moment. It’s going to work out.”

The Guardian contributed reporting

Fat Beach Day events are springing up across the US in an effort to fight back against fat-phobia, reclaim safe spaces for the community and honor plus-size culture. Today, one of these celebrations is being held to coincide with Pride month at Jacob Riis Beach in New York, a location deeply ensconced in the city’s activism space.

“We’re going through something culturally that is impacting us every day on an individual level and a systemic level,” said Jordan Underwood, the event organizer. “We’re really trying to open up a space for people to be themselves.”

Underwood, a plus-size model, artist and activist, described being bullied for their weight as far back as middle school. Consistent hate, cruelty and harmful rhetoric from fellow students led to them setting up a blog at 12 years old, which became a place where they documented their experiences and made sense of what they were going through. In many ways, this marked the beginning of their journey into what they denote as “fat activism”.

Now, they organize events throughout New York City and work with Berriez, a vintage store “curated for curves” based in Brooklyn, to organize Fat Beach Day.

There may be rain, but the pair aren’t bothered. The day – featuring food, drinks and free sunscreen from Vacation – is something they’ve been looking forward to and planning for months.

“I’m so self-conscious at the beach, and I’m never around people that look like me,” said Emma Zack, who started Berriez in 2018. “I’m so excited we’ve created this space for other folks with bigger bodies to have a good time.”

In an era in which weight-loss drugs like Ozempic are deeply ingrained in mainstream diet culture, and thinness is resurgent as the ideal beauty standard, events like Fat Beach Day are becoming powerful tools in the fight against these norms. They have become not just events but calls to action – public stands against the societal pressures to conform to these shifting criteria.

Vogue Business reported that in the autumn/winter 2024 season across fashion weeks, only 0.8% of models were plus-size, and 3.7% were mid-size, a notable decline from previous years. A survey published by KFF in May found that about one in eight adults, or more than 15 million people in the US, had used a drug like Ozempic or Mounjaro at some point in their lives, highlighting the extent of this societal shift.

“In the 2000s, there was this anti-fat, intense cultural swing that really parallels what we’re going through right now,” Underwood said. “It’s indisputable how insidious the fat-phobia was in that decade. Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson, both then a size six, were plastered all over the tabloids, accompanied by headlines that used words like ‘fat’.”

For the next few months, like-minded communities across the US have planned other Fat Beach Days. A Fat Friends Pool Party is taking place in Chicago on 13 July. There will also be a Bellies Out Beach Day in Los Angeles in a few weeks.

“Fat bodies and Riis are a match made in heaven,” said Kleo Alana, one of the people attending the New York event today. “Jordan Underwood and Berriez have brought heaven to Queens.”

For decades, Jacob Riis Beach, named after a social reformer and photojournalist, has been an iconic and popular gathering place for the LGBTQ+ community. Also referred to as “the people’s beach”, it’s become a cultural and social landmark in the city’s history.

More broadly, New York has, for decades, been at the heart of the fat acceptance movement. In the 1960s, about 500 protesters held a “fat-in” in Central Park, burning diet books and photographs of the supermodel Twiggy, to publicly encourage body positivity and liberation.

In recent years, after organized activism, legislation has been passed to prohibit weight discrimination. New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, signed a bill in 2023 to ban weight discrimination in hiring and housing. Until then, you could be fired in New York for being overweight.

Despite this, stigmatizations still exist, and are at their most pervasive on social media.

“It’s a really shitty time, not just on the internet but in society, to be fat, and it feels really violent in a lot of ways,” Zack said. “You’d think it wouldn’t be such a thing because New York is so open, and you dress however you want. I always say I never realized how much people hate fat people until I got TikTok.”

Carbon emissions from vans in the UK have risen by 63% since 1990, new analysis shows, as cars are getting cleaner.

While more people are opting to drive electric or plug-in hybrid cars, van drivers still prefer diesel because electric vans are much more expensive with little choice of models.

Those who do choose an electric van find they cannot use some public electric vehicle charging stations, which can be too small or have charging cables that are too short.

Campaigners say the next government should give businesses financial incentives to pick zero emission vans and improve charging infrastructure.

Research from Transport and Environment, a clean transport and energy advocacy group, found there are a million more vans on the road since 2014, and nearly all are diesel fuelled. Although the growth of online shopping has meant more delivery vans, most are still used by small businesses or sole traders.

The steady rise adds up to a 63% increase in carbon emissions from light vans since 1990, while the rapid uptake of electric cars and taxis in the past decade means emissions from cars are down by 19% over the same period, even though the total number of cars on the road has also risen.

Although there have been substantial reductions in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, vans are bucking that trend. Since 1990, NOx emissions from cars are down by 88% and from HGVs by 91%. But vans are down only 38% since 1990, are higher than in 2011 and overtook HGV emissions in 2015. NOx has been linked to the onset of asthma in children, and roadside emissions have remained at illegally high levels in some places.

Ralph Palmer of Transport and Environment said the rise in van emissions was “alarming”. “Despite the push for more electric vans on our roads, we are still witnessing a surge in greenhouse gas emissions from vans as a result of sustained sales of diesel vans, countering trends we are seeing in the car market,” he said.

“There’s not enough progress being made to support businesses and sole traders to make the switch.”

Oliver Lord, UK head of the Clean Cities campaign, said the UK was lagging behind European neighbours such as the Netherlands, which is working to create zero emission logistics zones.

Lord said: “It means that when you’re driving a van into their cities, if it’s registered after next year, it has to be electric. And by 2030, they’ve all got to be electric. The share of electric vans sold in the Netherlands is twice that in the UK. There’s no way we’ll clean our air and hit our climate goals unless we do more to help businesses switch away from polluting diesel vans.”

Last September, the government set out a zero emission vehicles (ZEV) mandate, which means that by the end of this year, 10% of all new van and car sales should be electric, rising to 100% by 2035. In theory, if manufacturers do not meet that target they will have to pay £15,000 for each extra diesel or petrol vehicle sold. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said 341,455 new vans were registered last year, of which 20,253 were powered by electric batteries.

Palmer said: “There are very, very generous flexibilities that have been given to automakers in the first two or three years of this scheme, which basically means that we won’t hit that 10% mark this year. But that should actually help bring far more van models to the market.”

Michael Salter-Church, sustainability director at BT subsidiary Openreach, said it had been “frustrated” by the range of vehicles on the market and the ZEV mandate was a “really important step”. “Our engineers really like them – the [lack of] noise, the ability to warm them up very quickly during winter weather,” he said.

Openreach aims to convert all of its 30,000 vans by 2031, and so far they have 4,100 battery-powered electric vans, helped by government grants of up to £5,000 a van for a maximum of 1,500 vans a year per company.“It is right to put more pressure on the manufacturers,” he said. “We were very concerned that no political party has pledged to extend the electric van grants beyond 31 March, 2025.”

Openreach has installed chargers at 2,000 of its engineers’ homes – most park at home overnight – but Salter-Church said they sometimes faced problems charging while on the road. “Quite often charging points are designed for cars, so we’ve found limited parking spaces, short cables and sometimes we found they are installed in car parks where the barrier height means vans can’t get in. Charging infrastructure needs to be improved.”

New research has found for the first time that PFAS “forever chemicals” accumulate in the testes, and the exposure probably affects children’s health.

The toxic chemicals can damage sperm during a sensitive developmental period, potentially leading to liver disease and higher cholesterol, especially in male offspring, the paper, which looked at the chemicals in mice, noted.

The research is part of a growing body of work that highlights how paternal exposure to toxic chemicals “can really impact the health, development and future diseases of the next generation”, said Richard Pilsner, a Wayne State University School of Medicine researcher who co-authored the study.

“We’ve always been concerned with maternal environmental health effects because women gestate the babies … but this research is really saying there is a paternal contribution to offspring health and development,” Pilsner added.

PFAS are a class of about 16,000 compounds used to make products resist water, stains and heat. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and have been found to accumulate in humans. The chemicals are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems.

PFAS alters sperm DNA methylation, which is a process that turns genes on and off, Pilsner said. The methylation patterns can be inherited at fertilization and influence early-life development as well as offspring health later in life.

The interference can alter genes in a way that affects how the liver produces cholesterol, which can lead to elevated levels. Researchers also found the chemicals affected genes associated with neuro-development, but the study did not check offspring for potential impacts.

Though PFAS most commonly accumulate in the blood and liver, they have been found to accumulate in organs throughout the body, as well as bones. Finding the chemicals in the testes highlights how pervasive the chemicals are in mammals’ bodies, said Michael Petriello, a Wayne State researcher and co-author.

The study looked at relatively low exposure levels compared with previous research. It also included long- and short-chain PFAS, the latter of which industry has claimed are generally safe and do not accumulate in the body. The study is among a growing body of research that shows the “safe” PFAS can also be measured in tissue or blood in mammals.

Water and food are the two main exposure routes to PFAS. New federal limits for some compounds in water are being implemented, but public health advocates say filtration systems can limit exposures. Men can protect themselves by avoiding nonstick cookware and waterproof clothing, and by educating themselves on products in which PFAS are commonly used.

I am fortunate to live in the suburbs, where nature is all around us. Our garden looks enchanting now that it’s summer. It has mature fruit trees – hazelnut, fig, walnut, apple and medlar – and in the flowerbed my mum has planted magnificent dahlias. Halfway down the garden, my dad’s precious greenhouse has loads of amazing vegetables of the season and flower seedlings. The allotment is behind our back gate and then there is an enormous field where there are sheep, cows and deer.

One evening on the way to our allotment, Dad opened the gate, peered out and turned around to put a finger on his lips. Quietly but quickly, I stepped towards the gate, and the first thing I saw were some incredibly cute fox cubs! They were lolloping in the soft, wet grass without a care in the world.

Dad told me to stay really still, so I played musical statues with my new fuzzy friends, and one of them came right to my feet! I see fox cubs every year but this was the closest I have ever come to one.

Another night, my dad heard commotion in the garden, he turned on the patio light and there was an adult fox walking confidently along our fence, with another one howling on the patio, I reckon it must have been the daddy fox who went to the pub for too long!
Mason, nine

Read today’s other YCD piece, by Elizabeth, 11: ‘Total eclipse of the duck’

My husband’s death smelled of cardamom. Death smells of many things, but my first memory of it was of cardamom and soft butter buns. It was Sunday morning. I was baking a gingerbread man for our son’s second birthday. We were celebrating two days in advance – Sunday was better than Tuesday, and the birthday boy was too young to know the difference anyway. My husband was out running a half marathon a bit outside Aarhus, on Denmark’s east coast, where we lived. He was late as usual, but I was determined not to let it bother me.

Everything was ready. Bunting hung from the living room ceiling, balloons stuck up everywhere. Elmer’s new balance bike was leaning against the wall. The birthday boy was taking a nap before the guests arrived. Soon the apartment would be filled with people, and I enjoyed the quiet moment before the storm.

Then the phone rang.

I picked up and a stranger’s voice asked whether I was Lasse’s wife. I felt an instinctive, nameless fear grip me as I said yes. The stranger was a doctor. Something had happened to my husband. I’m afraid it is serious, said the voice on the end of the phone. What was he talking about? Lasse had had a heart attack and was in a coma. I interrupted him. No, I said, tentative at first, then shouting. Over and over I shouted, screamed at him. What was he telling me?

The doctor kept his voice calm. He told me that I had to come to the cardiac unit immediately.

I screamed again.

Then I heard Elmer crying from his cot.

A switch inside me flipped. I felt the blood drain from my pounding head, the sweat on my hands turning to ice. Suddenly I was calm. A sharply focused but remote kind of calm. I cleared my throat and said I was ready now; I’d pulled myself together. I asked what I needed to do.

He told me that I should find someone to watch my son, and then take a taxi to the hospital. We agreed to meet at the entrance to the ward. Before I hung up, I said: “Just so you know, I’m six months pregnant. Please try to remember that, in case I’m not able to.”

My husband never woke up. I waited all night, as his family and mine arrived, their faces ashen. The following day he was pronounced dead.

When it was all over, they let me in to see the body. I got on to the bed and lay on my side, facing him, and someone tucked a sheet over us. It billowed around my hip and came to rest motionless over the contours of his body. He didn’t look right in that position – he never lay on his back. He had been arranged like that by another stranger, ready for me, for this.

I closed my eyes and whispered: It’s OK, we can just pretend we’re at home in bed. Soon Elmer will wake up in his cot, and hey, listen, the gulls are squawking outside again – remember last summer when a man came out on to his balcony one morning and shouted at them to fuck off? And we lay laughing in our bed, our eyes still shut?

Our unborn baby was awake again, rolling around inside me, playfully pushing and kicking at his dad’s body. I caressed the little triangle of Lasse’s chest hair like I always did, but it didn’t feel the same.

What happened? The doctors couldn’t tell me. No one understood why a healthy 27-year-old man would have a heart attack. I was in a state of numb shock, but I couldn’t fall apart. I had to go home and tell Elmer that his father had died.

How do you say that to a two-year-old? The hospital’s grief counsellor told me that death is too abstract for a small child to understand. What he can understand is that Dad isn’t coming home again – and then he needs to know where Dad has gone.

So I chose a star.

At home I sat on the bedroom floor with my son. I reminded him that Dad had gone out running and that he had a very long way to go. Yes, he replied, expectantly.

“Well, you know Dad had to run really, really far, and he kept going so long that he ran up into the sky, so high up that he couldn’t get down again. Now he is sitting on a star, watching over us. That is where he lives now. He doesn’t live with us any more. He will never come back home again.”

As I spoke, I started crying. I thought I might faint. My son looked at me with his big, serious eyes. In my hand I held a photo of my husband. We waved at him together.

Bye-bye, Dad.

The week after Lasse’s death was a blur with shiny glass splinters in it. My apartment was constantly filled with friends and family wanting to give me their condolences. All of them brought flowers. That was when I started resenting flowers, and resenting other people. The thick, sweet smell of lilies made me sick. I jumped every time the doorbell rang; I felt dizzy when I glanced at the pile of shoes in the entrance. I couldn’t stand their tears, or the way they looked at Elmer, wanting him to be a source of hope, a ray of light for them in their grief. As if he could carry all that. I wanted them to go away so I could be alone with my child, but as soon as they left I wanted them to come back. Every night I woke up from horrible nightmares to reality hitting me like a hammer: I was a single mother, a 26-year-old widow. In three months I must give birth to a dead man’s child.

A few days before the funeral, I noticed a pain in my abdomen. The closer we drew to the funeral, the more intense the pain became. It felt like a sharp metal hand wrapped around my womb, pulling down hard. I’d read somewhere that during pregnancy the mother’s and child’s emotions are entwined symbiotically, just like the blood that flows from one to the other. When a mother feels joy, so does her baby – which meant my grief was a poison I was pumping into my son unrelentingly. Could this be acting like an alarm inside my body, triggering the birth? I started panicking. Inside me wasn’t a safe place to be right now, but the alternative was not an option: it was far too early for labour. He wasn’t ready, and neither was I. I rang the maternity ward.

My mum drove me to the ultrasound clinic for an emergency scan. She held my hand while the doctor pressed the gun to my stomach. Right away, the baby materialised on the screen, yawning his funny little alien mouth and wiping his nose like he’d just woken up from a nap. He tried to stretch his arms and legs, and I felt it: kicks not of grief but of little feet. I burst into tears. Then I laughed. He was alive. So was I. And there was so much to live for.

Lasse and I had met in high school. I was 18 years old, he was 19. We fell deeply, madly in love. He was quirky. I liked that – I was quirky, too. He loved to draw and paint, dreaming of becoming an architect, while I loved reading and writing. After school we went to the same university, moving in together as students. It was only a small studio but we were happy there – the shelves increasingly packed with my books and the architectural models Lasse brought home from school. And when he ran out of shelf space he hung models on the walls, turning them into strange lamps (which was probably very dangerous since they were all extremely flammable, but we didn’t worry about that at the time). Years went by and I finished my bachelor’s degree and started a master’s in journalism. When Lasse proposed, I didn’t hesitate. It all felt so romantic. A few weeks before the wedding, I found out I was pregnant, and we were shocked but excited, too. I was 24 years old when Elmer was born – and the honeymoon was over.

I loved the father my husband became, but that process was no walk in the park for either of us. Elmer had colic, screaming for hours on end for the first three months of his life. Neither of us knew what to do and we took it out on each other. I was on maternity leave while Lasse continued his master’s degree. He often stayed late at school. After he graduated, he got a job at an architectural firm while my own career was swallowed up by motherhood before it had really started. I still dreamed of becoming a journalist, but I wasn’t able to separate myself from our child in the way my husband could.

Over time we learned the melody of family life. Elmer grew bigger, he learned to walk and to sleep and to talk. Dad. That was his first word. As he got older, the two of them would play with building blocks for hours, or make colourful drawings together. They connected in a different way than our son did with me – they were interested in the same things. I have a photo of them from our last holiday in Prague. They are looking at the trams, holding hands. For so long they were standing there. What is so fascinating about trams? I could never say.

The same week my husband died, I began writing. The first notes I made were broken, confused. How can I name our baby alone? Do we have insurance? How will I take care of two kids on my own? What colour should I choose for the coffin? Will life ever be good again?

I never imagined these notes would be used for anything – I was just writing as a desperate act of survival. All the things I couldn’t say to other people, I would write in the journal. I wrote about my longing for sex. I wrote about the nightmares where Lasse was chasing me, trying to rape me. About the anger I felt towards my mother-in-law. About those evenings when I was too exhausted to say goodnight to the stars with Elmer and instead yelled at him to go to sleep.

And I wrote about Lasse. I missed his kisses, I missed his touch. The smell of his aftershave, the crunchy sound of his espresso boiling in the morning. The way he couldn’t pass me when I was cooking without giving my butt a little spank. The way he looked at me while I read to Elmer – he always said I was the best storybook narrator. Glancing out of the window to see him walk past with Elmer on his shoulders, on the way to daycare. His arms around me as we fell asleep.

The happy memories were agony. But there were also good things in the present and I wrote those down, too: the small glimmers of joy when Elmer said something funny or sweet. The warmth from his little body as I held him, the smell of his hair. The evening I put on some music and danced again for the first time. The baby’s kicks; all those firsts still to come. The day Emma, my 19-year-old little sister – my angel, my hero – told me that she would move in to help me with the children.

A few weeks after Emma arrived, I went into labour. Giving birth to my second child was the most beautiful and painful experience in my life. Kaj was born into a circle of women: Emma, two of my best friends and my wonderful midwife. I had asked them not to mention my husband during labour; I couldn’t let my grief into that space. I wouldn’t be able to stand the pain of the contractions if the grief was also there. But as soon as Kaj was in my arms, we all cried together. He was so perfect. I let my head fall back towards the sky and sobbed. I asked my husband if he could see him – could he see how beautiful his son was? And, surrounded by people who loved me, in that moment I felt so alone. This little boy was mine alone.

When I got home from the hospital, everything became very busy. Kaj screamed day and night, and when he finally fell asleep, Elmer woke up – a constant loop of feedings and tantrums and dirty nappies. Emma tried her best to help, but the boys just cried for me until I came. At the same time, the apartment felt more and more like a museum, a monument to life as it should have been, grief sticking to the walls like dust. My longing for Lasse grew into anger. I started cursing at the night sky: Fuck you, Lasse! How dare you abandon me! Fuck you and your fucking star!

But slowly, very slowly, things got better. The children grew. The nights got quieter and the days got brighter. When Emma eventually moved out, I decided that it was time for me to look for a new place, too. I found a sweet little house for me and the boys in a village-like corner of Aarhus.

We landed in a simple everyday, a little life. Full of routines and meaning, the number of good days on the rise.

The boys played in the bathtub in the evenings and I sat with them, reading a book with rolled-up trousers and my feet submerged in the warm water. We watched TV, we lit candles on overcast mornings, we argued, they fought, I did the laundry and finished my master’s degree, Kaj learned to walk and chase spiders, I laid out clothes for the next day in three little piles, Elmer started drawing, I wrote a poem about getting on a bus and falling in love, we turned the music up and danced after dinner again. I baked buns at weekends. Sometimes we waved goodnight to Dad on the star, but most of the time we didn’t.

Lasse faded.

I could no longer recall his face every time I shut my eyes. I had to conjure up a particular detail first – his Adam’s apple, his wonky front tooth – in order to put the rest of the puzzle pieces together and make him whole again. And yet he still managed to find a way to appear, in all his clarity, just when I hadn’t called for him.

When Elmer pursed his lips in concentration, there he was.

When I warmed Kaj’s feet in my hands, it was like holding tiny versions of Lasse’s, with their funny high arches and toes scrunched up like they were cracking a nut.

But the Lasse who lived inside me was finally coming to rest.

It seemed like we made it through the storm.

I kept it together for six years. Then I collapsed. Suddenly I was unable to do anything. I cried at the complexity of setting a breakfast table. I yelled at the kids over nothing. I started having nightmares about dead bodies. Sometimes I dreamed that Lasse was chasing me and the kids around a house where none of the windows or doors opened. I quit my job and started therapy, but it didn’t really help.

That’s when I decided I had to go back to the grief, to remember the truth of those brutal, lonely days, to write the story properly. I had to take myself to the bottom of my own sea. The first time I opened up the dusty box of notebooks, I was very scared – what if the sorrow and darkness took over completely? What if I went down there and I couldn’t get back up to the surface?

As I read back through the muddled, grief-stricken notes, I noticed how hard I was on myself. I felt guilty for crying in front of Elmer. I felt guilty for not grieving hard enough. I felt guilty for being happy (unless it was because of the children).

A few weeks before giving birth I wrote this note: “I haven’t had my picture taken since Lasse died. I don’t feel like this is a moment in my life that should be captured. How should I look at the camera? Should I smile? That’s a bit misleading, isn’t it? Should I cry, then? Portraying myself as a fucking victim, self-absorbed, dwelling in sorrow? But what about the baby? I owe it to him to have a picture of “his” belly. In the future he should be able to look at it and see how tremendously happy I was to have him. That I feel so lucky to be gifted with all this love!”

But as I read I also started to notice how my notes dwelt on moments of grace – how I had used them to capture all the beauty that still remained in the world. In the midst of my loss, I had been writing about death only to write about life: which is so persistent and so beautiful.

Once I got started, the writing was incredibly liberating. I was in charge of the story this time, not the other way around. I closed my eyes and I went back to the hospital. I saw the dead body again. This time I stayed until Lasse didn’t scare me any more. I went back and told Elmer about the stars. I held Kaj in my arms for the first time again. And I told myself how great I did. How wonderful the boys turned out to be. That it was all worth it.

Peter on Linda