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Úrsúla inhaled the outdoor smell of the children’s hair. They had both practically thrown themselves onto the bed as soon as they had appeared in her hospital room.

‘Isn’t your dad with you?’ she asked, and they shook their heads.

‘No, he’s waiting in the car,’ Herdís said. ‘He said he’d talk to 268you later in peace and quiet, and that you have some problems that you need to sort out.’

‘Are you divorcing?’ Ari asked.

Herdís jabbed him with an elbow. ‘Don’t ask things like that, idiot,’ she hissed.

Úrsúla took a deep breath.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think so. At least, I’ll do everything I can to put things right. It’s been a bit difficult for us to talk to each other recently.’ It was a cliché, but it wasn’t easy to find the right words to explain the situation to the children. ‘But whatever happens, we both still love you.’

‘Yeah. Dad said that as well,’ Ari said, getting up from the bed. There was a perplexed expression on his face, the one that always appeared when he didn’t quite understand what was going on.

‘You look better than you did yesterday,’ Herdís said, clearly keen to direct the conversation elsewhere, and Úrsúla knew she was doing this to stop herself bursting into tears.

‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ Úrsúla said, and patted the back of her hand.

The previous evening had been a fog of confusion. She had slept and woken at intervals, and remembered seeing Nonni and the children at her side in the intensive-care unit. There had been so much that she would have liked to say to Nonni, but she’d drifted out of consciousness before she could say anything, and the next thing she knew, a woman in white appeared to take her blood pressure.

‘Good morning,’ the prime minister announced as he swept into the room with a vast box of chocolates in his hands.

Úrsúla kissed the children and felt a pang of guilt as she saw the disappointment on their faces as they disappeared sadly and silently through the door. They had probably become accustomed to being in second place. She promised herself she would deal with this: give them more of her time and make them a priority over meetings and assignments. 269

Úrsúla shook herself. Now she would need all the strength she had. She reached for the remote control and lifted the upper part of the bed as far as it would go, pulling herself into as much of a sitting position as the pain in her chest would allow. Then she reached for the sheet of paper Boris had given her and smoothed it out.

‘I have a copy of an email,’ she said. ‘Sent by you to Óðinn, my permanent secretary, in which you ask him to be of assistance in preparing an announcement postponing the South Coast Highway initiative.’

Úrsúla straightened herself in the bed, winced at the wave of pain that shot through her, and read directly from the paper – the words that she had read again and again that morning.