Her father had driven her home after the press conference. Neither of them had spoken a word. They had parked at their neighbour’s house further away and walked along an icy footpath to their own back garden before entering through the patio doors. Once inside, her father had remained tight-lipped. He checked all the entrances twice over before he stopped, took her hands in his and said: ‘I’ll put everything right.’

With emphasis, as if there were a full stop after each and every word. Then he dashed off out again the same way they had come.

This was what he was like. He was someone who put things right. He wished more than anything else in the whole world that someone would put things right. Clear up a horrendous misunderstanding. Find the mistake. Find five mistakes or ten or however many there were that had convinced Anti-Doping Norway that she was a drugs cheat. That she had used an anabolic steroid that right now she couldn’t even remember the name of, even though she had read their letter over and over again for three days in a row and anyway, knew of it from before.

Hege wanted someone to put things right, but on this particular evening she wished her father hadn’t left. That someone had been there with her. Someone other than Maggi, who presumably sat in her apartment in the basement watching Polish TV.

She walked through the almost pitch dark rooms. Her father had drawn all the curtains, thoroughly and systematically, before he left. Switched on the odd lamp that he had flicked off again on his second round. Hege stopped in front of the fridge. Opened it. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but didn’t want anything. Nothing except for her father to come home.

And that her mother would rise from the dead.

And that someone from Anti-Doping Norway would ring the doorbell with a broad smile and apologize for the dreadful misunderstanding. She certainly had not given a positive drugs test and would have to forget the terrible scene in front of the press corps when she managed to hold back the tears until her father had led her through a maze of corridors down to the basement car park. Someone else had driven out in her father’s Mercedes with the smoked glass windows to fool the journalists for long enough to enable the two of them to follow unnoticed in a borrowed Honda.

She quickly slammed the fridge door shut again.

It was four days since the World Cup race in Lillehammer. She had been knocked out in the semi-final of the classic sprint, but won the skiathlon the next day. Usually she got a lift with someone for races in Norway and Sweden. Teammates or coaches. Physiotherapists or even the national team doctor. This weekend, however, she had driven herself. On her own, in order to listen to an audiobook.