Stella nodded.

‘This is going to help you?’ she asked, eyes wide and sincere. ‘I don’t really want to meet Gréta again. It’s a bit awkward between us, but if you reckon it’ll help you…’

‘It would,’ Úrsúla said. ‘You’ve no idea how much this would help me. As the old saying goes: the truth sets you free. And this is the truth. Ingimar Magnússon is the reason I have to cancel the initiative.’

She closed her eyes and gave herself a mental pat on the back. Experienced politicians seemed mostly to weave their own realities, trying to manage facts only as they were presented, but the truth was a powerful weapon; maybe even the most powerful. She imagined how events would play out tomorrow.

The media would publish their pictures of her, injured in her hospital bed as her resignation was announced, and there would be a wave of sympathy that would soon enough turn into astonishment and even fury as the South Coast Highway was cancelled. But when Gréta came up with her scoop, leaked via Stella, people would understand why she had been forced to cancel the road. That way she would be recognised as having ended a venture backed by Ingimar the Terrorist and his friends, all of which stank of corruption.

The government parties would be slaughtered at the next election, and it would take the media and investigating committees 275months on end to get to the bottom of the road project’s financing. It would be just as bad for the prime minister to be seen as corrupt as it would be if he was seen as having been taken for a ride, when it emerged that he hadn’t known with whom he was dealing on such a critical matter. On top of which would be all the bitterness left by broken election promises.

It would be tough, but the social democrats would be reinvigorated over the next parliament, even if they were in opposition. To be fair, it would do them good to take something of a beating. It might breathe life into them and a new leader would probably emerge towards the end of the parliamentary term. Maybe what she had said to Eva earlier wasn’t entirely true. Perhaps she hadn’t got away from politics uninfected.

Stella took a black marker pen from her pocket and took hold of Úrsúla’s arm.

‘I’ll draw you a rune,’ she said. ‘It’s an old Icelandic one that will help you recover and give you power.’

‘Yes, please,’ Úrsúla said. ‘That would be very welcome. I could do with some extra strength.’

She watched as Stella drew fine lines with the marker pen on the inside of her arm, first a cross and then two more lines that made it a star, a circle around the point where the lines all crossed, and then a whole forest of hooks, point and curves that crossed the lines at intervals, so that it soon looked like an ice crystal.