The youngster had been used to being read to. Obviously not by her father. Maggi’s Norwegian language skills consisted of around one hundred words when she arrived, so for the first few months the eleven-year-old had read to her. After six months, they swapped roles.

Hege became the child Maggi had never had. She knew that she had by no means replaced Katinka Morell, but that didn’t matter. Hege often demonstrated her fondness for her with the occasional hug and lots of smiles. A few confidences, at least in her teenage years, and little signs of thoughtfulness. In the initial period, Maggi received drawings, home-made Christmas decorations and little notes with hearts attached to her bedsit door with something Hege called ‘teacher’s chewing gum’. Later, when her skiing career took Hege around the globe for two-thirds of the year, she always brought some small gift home. Never to her father. Always to the home help.

Maggi worked in silence, lived a quiet life and felt an unassuming, deep love for a young woman whose mother she was not. She didn’t often plan more than a couple of months ahead. Now she was approaching sixty years of age. Occasionally, especially when she had switched off the light to go to sleep, thoughts of life as a pensioner crossed her mind. As a rule she managed to shrug these off, and fall asleep.

The heart in the bathroom had faded after all these years. Even though Maggi looked after it well, it was unavoidable. At one time she had tried to freshen it up with a new coat of nail varnish, but fortunately realized in time that it looked awful. She managed to remove the new varnish before it hardened.

Hege had not done anything wrong. Maggi knew that. It wasn’t only the Norwegian media that had gone berserk over last week’s revelations, for some of the Polish newspapers had also covered the story extensively. Justine Kovalčik, the senior member of the Polish women’s national team, had found a fresh opportunity to cast malicious aspersions at her Norwegian competitors.

That riled Maggi.

Not that she knew much about either cross-country skiing or Kovalčik, but she knew her Hege Chin. Not on her life would she do anything wrong. Hege didn’t even cheat at Monopoly when she was aged eleven.

The bathroom did need to be renovated. Jan was right about that. The grout in the shower alcove had begun to loosen a long time ago. Maggi suspected it had started to get waterlogged behind there, since it did not take too many hours after each wash with bleach solution for it to smell a bit musty. The silicone seal between the basin and the wall had yellowed, with tiny spots of something Maggi assumed was some kind of mould. It couldn’t be eradicated, no matter how much she scrubbed.

She heard rhythmic, faint thuds from the basement. Hege had been exercising for nearly two hours down there and would soon come up for a shower. Maggi would have to hurry.