‘Can you help me with this?’ he asked yet again.

She shook her head. ‘I’m not the one who needs to apologise to Úrsúla Aradóttir,’ she said. ‘I haven’t done her any harm. You’re the one who has frightened and threatened her, not me. And that’s why you’re going to send her a written apology, even if it takes you a month.’ Kiddi sighed deeply and scratched his tousled head. ‘It’s not just so that she’s more likely to accept a settlement and you get away without a sentence, but because it’s good for your soul. It’s so you recognise what you’ve done,’ she said, placing her hands on his shoulders, bending over and kissing his cheek. ‘It’s simply not acceptable for my sons to be women-haters,’ she added.

Kiddi snorted. ‘They’re called misogynists, Mum,’ he said.

She smiled, left his room and went over to her own. It was as if the previous day had also brought Kiddi some relief. Maybe the 247screams and the tears had lifted a stone from his heart; and he had plenty to shed tears over. Marita hadn’t known that he had been so fond of Katrín Eva. In love with her, he had said, head over heels. But all Katrín Eva saw was his father.

Marita looked around the bedroom and wondered which of the things in there she would want to keep. She came to the conclusion that there was nothing she wanted, neither the vase on the chest of drawers that she had paid far too much for, nor the painting Jónatan had given her for her fortieth birthday. All these things were bound up with the bedroom where Jónatan had lain beside her, whispered sweet words to her, and acted as if a few months ago he hadn’t done something that had snatched away the foundations of her existence. It could all be left behind in the past. The whole room smelled of betrayal, or rather, some kind of revulsion, because betrayal alone would have been easier to bear. In reality, she wished that he had simply betrayed her, as men do. That would have been normal, almost to be expected, and at least something that she could have coped with.

‘I came home that evening,’ Kiddi had said. ‘I came home and went into the living room. I saw the old man on top of Katrín Eva, and he was fucking her. And the whore was crying because she already regretted it, she should have known fucking better…’

That was as far as he had got before Marita slapped him, hard.

‘Women shouldn’t cry when they fuck,’ she yelled, not knowing whether she should speak in Icelandic or Faroese to make herself clear, so that he would understand without question and the message would be imprinted on his consciousness for the rest of his life.

‘Really what you’re telling me is that your father raped Katrín Eva.’ 248

111

Úrsúla switched on the lamp and scanned her desk. This would be her last afternoon here, as in the morning she would collect the few personal items she had brought to her office during her time at the ministry. A draft of the press release that Eva had written, outlining her resignation, was contained in a couple of neat sheets of paper in front of her, along with notes for what she would say at tomorrow’s press conference. She had also put yellow sticky notes on some of the files she would be leaving behind.