‘He must have forgotten to let you know,’ Freya said. ‘It was booked ages ago.’

She put her hand cautiously under her carefully lacquered hair and adjusted it upwards, as if the lie had displaced it. This was at least one member of the ministry’s staff who would hardly miss her – and who she wouldn’t miss either.

109

Stella didn’t bother to clock out as she left, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t going back to work there. She was too upset to figure out which bus routes would take her to the TV station, so she ran up to Hverfisgata and flagged down a taxi.

Once she arrived at the studio, she asked for Gréta at reception and was shown into the station’s newsroom. It wasn’t lunchtime yet, but it looked like Gréta was already working her way through a packed lunch at her desk while she peered distractedly at the screen in front of her.

‘Hæ,’ she said in surprise as Stella greeted her, and seemed even more surprised when Stella asked if they could talk somewhere private. ‘I’m drowning in work—’ she began to explain, but Stella interrupted.

‘This is a work thing. Big news,’ she said. ‘The minister of the interior is resigning tomorrow.’ 244

Gréta quickly got to her feet and motioned for her to follow her into a room with a long conference table and chairs.

‘What did you say?’ Gréta asked as she sat down. ‘How do you know?’

Stella began to recount her story, but then decided that she would need some assurance that she would be able to get out into the open what needed to be said.

‘I’m not saying any more unless I’m interviewed and can tell the truth in my own words,’ she said.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Gréta asked and gazed at her with interest.

Stella felt the glow flow through her. She felt a kind of warmth when Gréta looked at her in that way, as if right now she was important. This was the look of concentrated energy that Gréta sent out to TV screens across the whole country when she looked into the camera and read the news.

Stella couldn’t help opening up to her and was barely halfway through the tale of the creepy journalist who had bought the bags of ministry rubbish, and how the permanent secretary had been in his car, when Gréta stood up and asked her to wait a moment. She left briefly and returned with a grey-haired man she introduced as the news editor.

‘I want to try to save the minister by admitting my part in all this,’ Stella said.

But he shook his head. ‘I think she’s beyond saving,’ he said, but sat down nevertheless.

‘Úrsúla is having an affair with a creep of a journalist called Thorbjörn, but he buys her waste paper from me so he can write about all kinds of stuff that’s taken out of context. And I believe the permanent secretary asked him to do it – or at least is controlling all this – because I saw him get out of Thorbjörn’s car. He was yelling at him, telling him that he hadn’t done as he had asked.’