MAN: I’m going to send in a complaint! I’ll get you struck off, Vanja. You can’t do this. I’m in the midst of a process and you have to take some responsibility! We’ve loads still to do.

VANJA hesitates on the other side of the door. Opens it a touch wider.

VANJA (feigning calm and speaking slowly): You have to listen to me now. I’m downright uncomfortable about the interaction between us. I’m the one who has fallen short. Not you. I can no longer understand you. I can’t have patients I simply can’t understand. You have changed. I’m absolutely incapable of helping you, because I don’t know how.

VANJA opens the door slightly wider. The MAN withdraws his foot.

VANJA (cont.): Of course, it was the intention that you should change. That you should feel better, I mean. We had actually made good progress. But after …

MAN (making a desperate appeal): Please! Please, Vanja! I need someone to talk to. I’ve got plans!

VANJA: You scare me.

MAN: Me? Now?

VANJA: Yes. No, not right now. But at other times. We can’t discuss this here and now. You must …

VANJA slams the door shut. Hurried footsteps are heard ascending the stone steps inside. The MAN hovers at the door, watching her through the leaded glass. For a long time.

TUESDAY 12 DECEMBER 2017

THE CEREMONY

Haakon Holm-Vegge would certainly not be forgotten any time soon. A viewing yesterday, and today a ceremony with the lighting of candles and laying of floral wreaths beside the ditch where he had lost his life.

It was bitterly cold.

The previous evening had brought freezing rain, with a sudden drop in temperature after midnight. In the morning, Maridalsveien wound its way like a glassy, dark canal from the city up the hillside to the accident site. At the last moment someone had organized a bus equipped with tyre chains. Everyone who wanted to be included in the event was ferried from the large car park just beside Skjerven Farm. Most of them had driven there in their own cars, two of which had already come to grief on the ice at Brekke. Selma had travelled from Grünerløkka, with studded shoes on her feet and elegant boots in her bag, and she could swear that the three roses she carried would be crushed to dust at the slightest touch. The frost had already tinged the tips of the petals icing-sugar-white.

She was nearly 16,000 kroner richer than yesterday evening and felt light-hearted. Despite her lack of sleep.