‘Now it’s over between us,’ he said, and he could feel the subsiding adrenaline rush leave his legs weak.

He took his bag and left, gently closing the door behind him. There was a good chance she would trash the place, but there wasn’t all that much there to trash. He could always buy new crockery and a new TV, and he’d have to get the lock changed.

He wiped the tears and the blood from his face as he jogged down the stairs. Later he would shed proper tears, when he started to miss her. But right now he was going to allow himself to feel the relief that streamed through his veins like a celebration. He had just graduated from his very own school of serenity. He had proved to himself that he was nothing like his father. He hadn’t returned Íris’s blow. What was more, he hadn’t even wanted to. Maybe the time would come when he could allow himself to love someone.

89

‘It’s good news, Kiddi,’ Marita said, glancing from father to son across the dinner table where the two of them sat without speaking. ‘It’s good news for us that the police are dropping the investigation.’

‘I know that,’ Kiddi said, without looking up. Instead he speared chunks of sausage with his fork, stuffing them into his mouth as fast as he could.

Jónatan was hunched over his plate, eating at a leisurely pace. He cut slices of sausage, speared them with his fork, piled mashed 203potato on top with his knife, and put it in his mouth. Neither of them touched the salad any more than they usually did, so there would be leftovers of that tomorrow.

She and Jónatan had been delighted when the lawyer had called. They had fallen into each other’s arms and Marita had burst into tears.

‘There, there,’ Jónatan had said, brushing a tear from her cheek. ‘You see? I told you I’d be proved innocent.’

Marita nodded and buried her face in his chest while her whole frame trembled with relief. She had read enough about rape cases over the last few months to know that a case being dropped didn’t mean innocence, but simply that the police did not believe there was enough evidence to support a prosecution. But that didn’t matter. Of course Jónatan had to be innocent, and the conclusion bore that out. But now it seemed that Jónatan’s elation had faded away. The petulant look on Kiddi’s face had been enough to spoil his happiness. The boy had been unusually moody since all this had begun, which was understandable, but now this was all over so he could be a little more cheerful.

‘Maybe we should do something to celebrate this all being over,’ Marita said. ‘Maybe a holiday, somewhere warm. The Canaries, or Tenerife.’

‘Tenerife is part of the Canaries,’ Kiddi pointed out sulkily.

Marita shrugged. She had long since given up taking any notice when she was corrected or told what to do. As a Faroese, she would never have been able to thrive in Iceland otherwise. But as he entered his teens, Kiddi seemed to have formed the impression that his mother was less than smart.