Then she’d have to call her mother back home in the Faroes, tell her the whole story and ask her to let Klemens stay with her a few more weeks. It wasn’t because she was concerned he’d find something out, or because the nursery-school staff weren’t wonderful; it was more because she doubted her own ability to cope with what the four-year-old might get up to. The day the police from Reykjavík had arrived to take Jónatan’s statement, Klemmi had thrown a tantrum. Normally she could calm him down fairly easily, but this time she had barely managed to stop herself slapping the boy’s face. His demanding presence had become unbearable, now that she hardly had the energy to keep herself going. And now Kiddi really needed her full attention as he was old enough to understand perfectly well what was going on.

Marita scrolled back through the news coverage. The circumstances were described in the same words across every media outlet, as if they were simply copying each other. The story was that the victim had been babysitting the police officer’s four-year-old son one evening when he came home late from a shift. He had offered her beer, and as she was unused to alcohol she was soon drunk. The policeman was then supposed to have forced her to have sex with him. The girl had gone home, half dressed and in tears, and from there to the health centre with her mother, after which police officers were called in from Reykjavík to handle the accusation of rape. To a stranger who didn’t know Jónatan and Katrín Eva, it might all sound very plausible.

But she remembered that evening clearly, and it hadn’t been anything like Katrín Eva had described to the police. Coming home from the annual work get-together, Marita had met Katrín Eva in the doorway, and while the girl was clearly in a hurry, she had been neither in tears nor half dressed. She had been wearing that huge parka of hers and had said hello to Marita as they met at the door. Marita had asked if Klemmi had been good and Katrín Eva had said that he had, and that he had fallen asleep some time ago. Then they had said goodbye, Marita had taken off her 76shoes and her coat, fetched herself a glass of water and gone into the living room where Jónatan was asleep on the sofa, still in his uniform. She had lifted his feet, waking him up, and had sat on the sofa to drink her water while she told him about the skits that had been performed at the staff party. She didn’t recall that he had been under the influence, although she couldn’t swear that he hadn’t had any beer. He listened to her account of the party, sniggered at one or two of the jokes that she repeated for him, and yawned. His feet were bare and lay in her lap. She had slipped a hand inside one trouser leg and ran it over the hairs on his shin, feeling his warmth.