She ran her fingers over the new Helm of Awe tattooed on her forearm, hoping it would protect her from drinking herself into a stupor and going home with someone she really didn’t want; such as the news reporter the Annas always invited and who was clearly in the ‘exciting’ class – courtesy of her TV fame, as she certainly wasn’t cute. Stella harboured a suspicion that the Annas were trying to pair her up with this woman, but her enthusiasm for this was precisely zero. Pondering this, she pushed the cleaning trolley ahead of her along the corridor and practically ran into a woman. The woman took hold of the trolley and stopped it with a laugh.

She extended a hand.

‘I’m the new minister,’ the woman said, and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I don’t suppose you can tell me where someone could sneak out for a quiet smoke?’

The speech that Permanent Secretary Óðinn had made earlier that day, emphasising that staff, whatever their political persuasion, were here to assist the minister in shouldering a great responsibility, came to Stella’s mind. So she took the minister to the fourth floor balcony, where she herself went to smoke. The minister could hardly be expected to shoulder all that responsibility without an occasional puff. 15

5

Gunnar put everything he had into that last lift. His shoulders screamed in pain and he was sure he could feel the tendons in his forearms tear under the strain. He was up to 150 kilos on the bench and while the fourth lift had been tough, the fifth was a bastard. He wasn’t concerned about the weights dropping onto him, though, and he couldn’t be bothered to ask a member of staff to watch over him, just in case things went badly. He was the competent, reliable type who fixed things alone when push came to shove. All his adult life had gone into preparing for this role, and he knew deep inside that a day of reckoning would come when the difference between life and death would be down to him alone.

‘That’s some proper punishment!’ said a man who walked past, and Gunnar realised that a loud gasp must have accompanied the last lift. He had to take a couple of deep breaths before he dared sit up. The sweat had glued his back to the bench and there were black dots dancing before his eyes. He was satisfied with what he had achieved, and now he needed to eat well to feed his freshly trained muscles. He wished they were even bigger, but for his work, not through vanity. His job called for bulging muscles, although bulk alone wasn’t the key; strength and courage had to go hand in hand.

He spent a long time under the shower, enjoying the feeling of his pores opening as the sweat washed away. Weightlifting was accompanied by a kind of spiritual wellbeing: the triumph of his will over his body never failed to make him proud of himself. It was more difficult with running though. He always had to force himself to run and generally didn’t feel great afterwards. But it was also important for work that he could sprint, not that he would often have to do it. He pulled on his trousers and decided to do without a singlet under his shirt. He was so hot that he felt as if he was on fire. 16