‘Breakfast!’ she called when she heard the bathroom door open, and before long Kiddi stood in the kitchen doorway. She had expected to see angry truculence, but instead he stood there, his face puffy with tears.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he wailed.

She went over and wrapped her arms around him. He shook as he sobbed on her shoulder, and she wondered how long it had been since she had held him like this. His frame, which had so recently been boyish and slim, had bulked out as his shoulders had broadened and his muscles had built up. Physically he was a fully grown man, but this was still her little boy crying on her shoulder.

‘I’m not angry,’ she said gently, leading him to the kitchen table and sitting him down. ‘I’m just shocked at how you were able to fool those men into intending to harm that woman. I can’t understand how you could think of doing such a thing. I’m not sure you comprehend what could have happened.’

Kiddi said nothing, but filled his bowl with a generous helping of cereal.

‘The woman could have been raped. She could have suffered all sorts of violence,’ she continued. ‘And those disgusting messages…’

‘I was just trying to scare her,’ Kiddi said, pouring milk over his cereal.

He began to spoon food into his mouth, and Marita sat and watched as he shovelled it up with a warm feeling of fondness that filled her whole body. In spite of his size, regardless of the fear he had inflicted on a complete stranger, despite the danger he had conjured up, he was still a child. He was still a boy who shovelled breakfast cereal into his mouth as he waited humbly for his mother to scold him.

‘I know that in your own way you were trying to help me and your dad,’ she said. ‘But trying to scare people into not investigating 237a case is absolutely not the right way to do it. The right thing is to make efforts to prove your innocence…’

Kiddi shoved his bowl away so that milk spilled onto the table.

‘Dad isn’t as innocent as you think,’ he snarled. ‘Maybe it’s time you figured that out. Even though that fucking whore Katrín Eva isn’t telling the truth, Dad isn’t the angel you always seem to think he is.’

He bolted from the kitchen and Marita heard the bedroom door slam behind him, as she stood up, feeling her own rage finally boiling over.

All the inner terror that she had again and again gulped down, the anger that had smouldered so long deep in her belly, erupted with a force that took control of her body. She rushed along the corridor after Kiddi and wrenched open the door to his bedroom. A red mist had formed in front of her eyes and the blood pumped through the veins in her head at a fearsome pace.

‘Tell me what you mean!’ she yelled. ‘What do you think you know that I don’t? Tell me, everything, all of it. Tell me every fucking thing!’