Vanja and Kristina had chosen to have a viewing.

Haakon lay in a coffin placed on two black trestles in the middle of the living room. The lid was off and the red lining looked like silk. The corpse was dressed in a jogging suit from Lyn, the club Haakon had joined as a four-year-old and had never left. Red-and-white jacket with a logo and dark-blue trousers with zips along the sides. His hair looked newly shampooed. Blond and combed back. His eyes and mouth were closed. The newspapers had mentioned a head injury. Someone must have disguised it with make-up. Since there were still a number of unexplained circumstances surrounding the accident, Selma couldn’t entirely understand why Haakon’s body had already been released to the family.

But it had been.

From a distance he looked undeniably dead.

Or like a not too successful wax doll, it struck Selma as she carefully wove her way through all the stools and wooden chairs set out for the guests. An inanimate object, something that had never been alive.

There must be at least twenty people present, on a Monday morning, and the room was cold despite the fire being lit. A window was slightly ajar. People moved away from the icy draught. Selma assumed that this was what made it possible to have a dead body on display in an ordinary living room.

When the message about the viewing had arrived by text, Selma had been considerably upset. She knew she would have to go, but she did not want to. She had never seen a dead person before. Not even her own parents. Her father had taken a tumble on a business trip when Selma was thirty-two, and she had had no choice. Her mother had died after a short illness. Pancreatic cancer, it was all over within six weeks, and Selma had made sure to be in Nice with three girlfriends when the end was near. Her holiday was interrupted, but her mother was securely placed in a closed coffin by the time Selma arrived home for the funeral. She had given a firm ‘no thanks’ when the undertaker from Jølstad’s funeral services had offered to open the lid.

There was something theatrical about a scene such as this. Something artificial, Selma felt when she looked out at all the people sitting with bowed heads and hankies in their hands. So typical of Vanja and Kristina.

Everything was so over the top with them.

Always so lively. The apartment was a horn of plenty filled with bizarre caprices. Nothing matched, which in some peculiar way meant that everything went with everything else. An eclectic style and vivid colours made the place so unusual that most people laughed when they entered.

Now no one was laughing, although to be honest, a cadaver in running clothes was pretty absurd.