When Damir first sang the song to her, Nadja cried. It was not especially complicated, a few chords and a line about a woman leaving a window open even in winter. Nadja did exactly that. He said he wrote it after their first night talking until morning in her kitchen. She kept the song as something that did not need sharing with every audience.
A year later they performed together in a small club. With his agreement Nadja sang it and mentioned it was written for her. Afterward a woman named Iva approached, looking cautious rather than mocking. She said she had received the same song five years earlier with the same story about an open window.
At first Nadja thought Iva wanted to spoil the evening. Damir had described a jealous former partner before. But Iva did not ask to speak to him or promise more secrets. She sent an old performance recording published publicly years before Nadja met him. In it Damir used Iva's nickname and dedicated the song to her. Later another woman contacted Nadja without demanding anyone take her side.
Damir said artists constantly reworked their material. Nadja knew that was true. She was not accusing him of using the same chords. She asked why he gave each window another name and claimed the song had never existed before. He replied that at each moment he felt what he sang. That did not explain why he needed to invent its creation date to make the feeling sound more special.
There was no simultaneous affair she could prove, nor did she need a new investigation. What she knew had already altered their intimacy. In later conversations she noticed how often he used the same lovely sentences to bypass uncomfortable questions. When she requested a break, he half-jokingly sang the chorus. That was when she decided to end the relationship.
They continued separately as performers. Nadja removed the song from her repertoire, not because it lacked value but because she could not sing without hearing somebody else's story beneath hers. She began writing lyrics, badly at first, with too many words and too little breath. At one performance she forgot a line and simply told the audience. They laughed and waited. For the first time an imperfect moment sounded more honest than a perfect dedication.