He ate as he walked, and when he was outside Úrsúla’s house he swept snow from one of the low concrete bollards across the street and gazed at her through the window as he finished his sandwich. She was sitting at her desk, a cheek turned towards him, and for a moment he felt she hadn’t changed at all, was still the lively little girl with endless questions on her lips. Then that feeling fizzled out as he recalled that she was halfway to being in the devil’s claws.

He felt the terror grip his heart as suddenly the golden light from her table lamp no longer seemed to be a warm and comforting glow that fell on her face, but was instead the glare from the burning fires of hell.

37

Monday

14

‘I have to confess that it completely slipped my mind,’ Permanent Secretary Óðinn said. ‘I’ll ask for information from your secretary and look into it today.’

Úrsúla smiled to hide her impatience. It wasn’t as if this was something major that he needed to be involved in. All that was needed was for him to look at the memo from the secretary, who had noted down the main points and supporting information from the mother on Friday, and then decide in whose hands to put the matter. This would take him two or three minutes at most. But to be fair, this was something she had mentioned to him in haste as he stood in the doorway after their first meeting, so he hadn’t noted anything down.

She told herself that she would need to take a few deep breaths and adjust to the ministry’s pace before she could demand that its staff shift up a gear to keep up with her. At any rate, that was her aim: a more efficient ministry that could deal with things fast. It was appalling how so many cases were caught up in the system, and that these mainly involved foreign citizens – which was her field of expertise. Asylum seekers could wait months for responses to appeals, and the endless uncertainty could drive people mad, with all the consequences that entailed.

She knew perfectly well how insecurity could affect people. If you didn’t feel safe, mindfulness was just some kind of fad for westerners who had no need to fear what tomorrow might bring. It was the opposite of human dignity to be able to aim for nothing 38more than surviving from one day to the next. So this was at the top of her list: finding ways for the ministry to shorten the time it took to process cases. Of course, she only had a year, but twelve months ought to be enough to get things moving in the right direction.

She sat down with the heavy South Coast Highway folder in front of her. This was an issue that had been mentioned when she had been asked to take the job; tough decisions would need to be taken, she’d been told. Personally, she had little liking for this kind of private enterprise, but the state’s lack of initiative regarding the road network had already cost too many lives, so it was clear that something had to be done to redevelop the most heavily used roads in the south-west.