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Úrsúla had decided to go home after her appointment with the psychologist, telling Freyja that she would call her to pick up any messages. Now she stood on a chair in the kitchen so she could peer deep into the spice cupboard, and spied a glass jar they always used to mix the cinnamon and sugar the children liked to have on rice pudding. Kátur watched her with vigilant eyes, always hoping that something edible might come his way.

She stepped down from the chair, put two slices of bread in the toaster and turned up the setting so they would be properly dark. The bread had to be fully toasted, otherwise it wouldn’t be right. This was one of the things that people who hadn’t been brought up poor couldn’t understand. There was a kind of victory to be had in toast with cinnamon sugar, and in enjoying it, even now when the fridge was full of the selection of brie, marmalade and other delicacies that Nonni made sure they had. There was a comfort in knowing, as a pampered westerner, that the secret of life simply came down to making sure your belly was full. There was a certain security that came with this knowledge.

As she scattered sugar onto the hot bread, it melted into it, releasing 195the cinnamon aroma. Úrsúla chewed the toast and wondered whether to make herself coffee – or even tea, as she had done as a child – but she didn’t want to ruin the flavour of the cinnamon bread right away. This was the taste of the woollen sweaters that her mother knitted after work, the taste of the two of them delivering newspapers before school, the taste of the lies she had to invent to keep the school from knowing about the situation at home.

This background had made it easier for her to work in challenging conditions – where there were few comforts, where the food was bland and the demands were high. She had no problem with sacrificing sleep if there was work to be done, and didn’t care if she had to live on rice alone for weeks at a time. Many of her colleagues in the aid sector had struggled with this, but for her it was straightforward not to think about what wasn’t available.

The doorbell rang, and Kátur responded with a volley of barks. For a moment Úrsúla felt her heart sink, and contemplated not answering the door. Nonni wasn’t at home to open it for her, as the police guidelines had laid down. But she shook off the fear. After all, Pétur was behind lock and key. Now she had the security camera and the emergency button, so what could go wrong?

A neat young man holding a box stood on the steps, or so the strange angle of the security camera showed her. He had to be a delivery driver, so she picked Kátur up and held him under one arm to prevent him greeting the man with a further barrage of barks.