Her understanding was even slower to take shape. It seemed that time had suddenly slowed down. Úrsúla noticed that darkness had fallen outside and that her office was dim; she hadn’t switched on the main lights, only the desk lamp. These were the details that registered on her consciousness as her heart began to hammer in her chest.

‘It’s Stella isn’t it – who cleans?’ Úrsúla asked again.

‘Úrsúla, she…’ Eva was clearly in distress. ‘She’s saying that a 250journalist, clearly Thorbjörn from Vefpressan, has been buying the ministry’s waste paper from her, and that she saw Óðinn talking to him in a car outside the building, and that she believes that this journalist has had … an intimate relationship with you.’

The question was there in Eva’s voice, but Úrsúla was unable to give her an answer. She was unable to explain, unable to remain there any longer. She had to get home, to Nonni.

112

Eva had sent Gunnar a message, asking him to drive Úrsúla home, but instead she had ignored Eva’s calls, run through the ministry building, down to the entrance and rushed out and across Arnarhóll. Úrsúla hurried along, her coat flapping, but she didn’t feel cold as a thaw had set in and the streets were awash with treacherous slush. She made her way through the centre of the city without registering her surroundings, her thoughts too disturbed to see the details as she hurried along Hólatorg, beside the graveyard, and tried again to call Nonni. He didn’t answer. She hoped he hadn’t seen the news, that he had taken the children swimming or that he was watching some comedy with them with his phone switched off, or that he was cooking and the music in the kitchen drowned out the sound of his phone ringing. There was nothing unusual about him not answering the phone, so it didn’t have to be a bad sign. How often had she desperately tried to call home to let Nonni know that she was fine – to let him know that she wasn’t the Médecins Sans Frontières member of staff who had been in isolation after being infected with Ebola? That she was unhurt after the shells had hit the ground just outside the refugee camp in Syria? Now she could feel the hot tears running down her cheeks at the thought that he might have heard on the news that she had betrayed him, that she had broken the single most important promise she had ever made; the promise she had made to him. 251

The pavement along their street was packed with a deep layer of ice that made it impassable, so there was no choice but to step out into the road and walk along the tyre tracks where the rising temperature had sliced through the ice and exposed the road surface below. This groove in the ice had become a river of meltwater running down the street and she could feel the icy water leaking into her shoes. She paid it no attention; those shoes could go to hell and her toes could freeze from her feet for all she cared, as long as she could get home to Nonni before he could hear the news somewhere else of what she had done.