Her birth mother had made it worth coming into the world by abandoning her.

Four Olympic titles and almost ten thousand hours of training later, Hege knew that life brought ups as well as downs. She had learned to take them both with an equanimity that disconcerted the Norwegian public.

Hege Chin Morell knew there were great moments in life. And small ones too. Life was a chain of strong and weak links, of good and bad, of apathy and historic occasions and everything that existed between birth and death. The chain was long, and this particular moment, this absurd press conference, would just have to be endured. Hege had to stay on her feet, and she straightened her back yet another notch at the thought.

Something was completely wrong, and it was going to be cleared up.

She opened her eyes again and stared at a point high above the heads of the almost forty assembled journalists and photographers. Four serious men sat lined up beside her, three of them with hands folded and downcast eyes. The table was covered in a dark-blue tablecloth that matched her sweater, a garment that for the first time in six years was stripped of the sponsor’s name. Even the manufacturer’s logo was covered with a piece of tape. The usual fruit bowls, smoothie bottles and bottled water, that as a rule were strategically laid out on the table to be captured by the camera lenses, were conspicuous by their absence too. A solitary, nameless jug sat on the tablecloth. Only Hege had been favoured with a glass.

It was empty.

An intense tumult, filled with speculation, had suddenly ceased the moment she entered. The cameras zoomed and clicked, some people went on whispering, but the President of Norway’s Cross-Country Skiing Federation, Bottolf Odda, did not have to raise his voice when he fiddled with the microphone and cleared his throat.

‘Welcome to this press conference,’ he said. ‘We’ll come straight to the point.’

A photographer tripped over someone else’s leg and sprawled his full length. The president paid no attention to him whatsoever.

‘The reason Norway’s Cross-Country Skiing Federation has called this conference is that Hege has had …’

He swallowed.

‘A situation has arisen,’ he began again. ‘Earlier this autumn, Hege Chin Morell gave a drug test sample that has proved positive.’

Now even the cameras fell silent.

‘Which must be a mistake,’ the cross-country skier herself said loudly. ‘I haven’t taken drugs of any kind. There must be something wrong with the tests.’

The photographers went berserk again.

THE FATHER

The stairway smelled indefinably dirty. An earthy odour combined with heavy traffic, Jan Morell thought as he waited for someone to open the door.