The Nille blanket and a pillow were clearly visible on top of the IKEA bag, and she grabbed both of them. She made herself as comfortable as possible among the big, reddish-brown stones. She took out her phone. Einar didn’t move a muscle. He must be already in a deep sleep. Selma wanted to watch a film, but discovered that she had only eight per cent juice left. Einar’s power bank was somewhere in the bags strewn around him, but it felt wrong to rummage through his belongings. She stuffed her phone back in her bag and began to talk instead.

She talked about Jan Morell. About his daughter, Hege. She told of the break-in at Sølve Bang’s apartment, about Lars Winther’s photo of her on her way into the Poker Turk’s. In a low, singsong voice, she spoke of everything she had experienced in this past week. Of Maggi, whom she liked, and Benedicte Selhus, whom she thought a sad figure. She talked about someone out there in the night, whom she thought had avenged himself on three boys in an old photograph. She spoke of Haakon, who would be cremated tomorrow, at a funeral that, after the events of recent days, probably wouldn’t take place in a crowded Trefoldighetskirke, the Trinity Church, in the presence of royalty. Only close family and a few friends would be there. And in a completely different venue from the one originally planned, in a possibly vain attempt to keep the press at bay. She talked about her frustration at not being able to understand what Haakon had to do with Hege’s case. Maybe she had been right all along: everything was coincidental, but at the same time she couldn’t quite put his case out of her mind.

She didn’t mention her own children.

She thought of them, all the time, and felt a painful gnawing in her diaphragm that never let up, and of her sorrow that they no longer even sent her hateful text messages.

She refused to think about Anine and Johannes, and spoke instead about a man in ski boots who had first frightened Hege, then her, by openly trudging into a property in Ormsundveien that no longer belonged to her.

Selma had been talking for three hours on the trot. A lot of it had been mentioned several times over. Some of it she had forgotten to say. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering, but she kept going and, at regular intervals, took her hand out to feel whether Einar was still alive.