‘Just say hello,’ Stella said. That was what she always did, and so far it had worked well enough.

‘Just hello?’ 48

‘Yep,’ Stella said. ‘You say hello, and she replies somehow or other, and then you just start to chat.’

Gréta put the knife down and picked up her phone. She stared at the screen for a moment as if she needed to screw up her courage, and Stella felt a pang of sympathy for her. This was a woman who wasn’t usually on the back foot.

‘Phew. I hope she replies soon, otherwise I’m going to be a bag of nerves,’ Gréta said, tossing her phone onto the table as if it had burned her hand. She poured a whole carton of cream in with the mushrooms. ‘Best to think about something else,’ she muttered. ‘What’s she like, the new minister?’

‘She’s fine,’ Stella said. ‘We go for a smoke together on the balcony.’

‘Really? I didn’t think she looked like a smoker,’ Gréta said. ‘What do you talk about when you’re having a smoke?’

‘Y’know,’ Stella said. ‘This and that.’

‘She comes across as a tough character.’

‘How so?’

‘Well, you know, cool jobs and all that. Refugee camps, Médecins Sans Frontières, crisis management. She comes across as an adrenaline junkie, not the type you’d expect would become a minister. It looks like there’s a lot more paperwork than in the work she’s used to.’

Gréta reached for the phone she had only just tossed aside.

‘She’s not answering,’ she said with a frown.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Stella said, feeling her belly call out for food. ‘If this one doesn’t work out then there are plenty more fish in the sea. And you can always use old-fashioned Icelandic magic to pull a chick,’ she added, pointing at the rune on her arm.

Gréta laughed.

‘If you can work some magic that brings her to me, then that would be wonderful.’

‘I’m not joking,’ Stella said. ‘There’s an old spell you can use to attract girls. In fact, it’s pretty simple.’ 49

Gréta gazed at her curiously, as if she was trying to weigh up whether or not she was being serious.

‘I’m not sure I believe in that kind of stuff,’ she said, stirring the sauce.

Stella shrugged.

‘It’s like the placebo effect,’ she said. ‘If you believe it’ll work, then it will.’

19

There was something otherworldly about the way the secretary at reception downstairs shook her head, as if Úrsúla lived on a separate plane from the rest of the ministry, so contact with them was impossible. But this couldn’t be true. Every person who set foot inside the ministry was booked in and out of the building.

Úrsúla asked the woman to check again, both on the computer system and the paper record. She obediently did so, but there was no visit recorded on Friday morning.

‘Could someone have forgotten to book her in?’ she asked, knowing it was futile. All the same, it was worth asking; people were fallible and mistakes happened.