‘Two things,’ she said in an undertone. ‘You could be a bit nicer to Maggi …’

He blinked.

‘And then you can get me a date with Morten Harket.’

Jan Morell laughed out loud. His laugh engaged his eyes and mouth and lungs and vocal cords. Selma had never heard him laugh like that, and he laughed for a long time.

‘I’ll certainly try the first,’ he finally said. ‘But when it comes to Morten Harket, even I have to throw in the towel.’

Jan Morell was still chuckling when Selma closed the door behind him and returned to Einar.

‘Now,’ she said, rubbing her hands. ‘Pizza. With pineapple on top, the way we both love.’

‘Love,’ Einar said, nodding, and Selma couldn’t recall the last time she had felt so happy.

Happy and free, it dawned on her when she stood in the middle of the living room, looking around in this horrific arsehole of an apartment.

Jan was right.

Selma Falck was free to do whatever she wanted.

SUNDAY 25 FEBRUARY 2018

The twenty-third Winter Olympic Games were over.

Norway had never performed better. The small country on Europe’s northern periphery set a new record for the total number of medals won and became the best nation in the world. Not only for the 2018 games, but also in history. Fourteen gold. Just as many silver. Eleven bronze, and in addition so many places in the top ten that no one could be bothered counting.

Hege Chin Morell was also in PyeongChang.

When she wasn’t selected for the opening event, the ten-kilometre freestyle, she began to realize how things stood. Before she was sabotaged, she was undoubtedly the best skier in the national team. In a test run in the same event three days before departure for the Olympics, she had beaten the runner-up by four seconds. None of her efforts were good enough. Too much time had elapsed, according to her trainers. They were unsure, they claimed, and there was fierce competition for places. Two fits of rage from Jan Morell and yet another refusal to let her start later, Hege understood that she would never again ski for the Norwegian national team.

Her decision to quit was made on the flight home. She wrote a message on a napkin and asked her father to drive her up to the Cross-Country Skiing Federation HQ. There, she calmly walked in, borrowed a roll of tape from the receptionist, and hung the napkin on the door of Bottolf Odda’s office.

When she strode out of the Crystal Palace, with determination in every step, towards her father’s car to drive home to Vettakollen, she didn’t yet know that she would never again strap on a pair of cross-country skis.

Instead, she became a doctor and moved abroad.

EPILOGUE

THURSDAY 29 DECEMBER 1977

Bloody, shitty brother.