Marita had met Katrín Eva in the doorway when she came in, wrapped up in her down jacket, and had greeted her:

‘Hello, love. How was the evening?’

Katrín Eva had mumbled a reply, which Marita had taken as confirming that the evening had been fine.

‘Was Klemmi all right?’

‘Yes. He went to sleep ages ago.’

Katrín Eva had not looked up, and she guessed that the girl was sleepy and clearly wanted to be on her way home rather than hanging about in the cold.

‘I’ll pay the money into your account, love,’ Marita had called after her.

Katrín Eva had turned and waved the notes she had in her hand, indicating that Jónatan had already paid her for the evening’s babysitting. There was nothing unusual about that. It looked to be three five-thousand krónur notes, much more than she was owed, but Jónatan had always liked to be generous. Katrín Eva was normally cheery and would spend some time chatting to Marita before leaving, but that evening she had seemed taciturn, but it had been late and she must have been tired. On top of having drunk a beer.

Maybe that was why she hadn’t stopped to tell Marita what Klemmi had got up to as she sometimes did, and hadn’t asked how the staff dinner had been. Perhaps she was trying to disguise the fact that she was feeling the effects of the beer, and that was why 101she had avoided Marita’s eye and kept her face deep in the fur collar of that ridiculously expensive coat she was so proud of.

Even though she had not seen Katrín Eva’s face properly, she had still been able to tell the police officers from Reykjavík, when they asked her repeatedly, that she was certain the girl hadn’t been in tears. If that had been the case, she would have heard it in her voice. Instead, she had just said, in a normal voice, that Klemmi had gone to sleep ages ago, then she waved a couple of notes in the air and left. If anything untoward had been going on, then Marita would have felt it as soon as she came in. But that couldn’t have been the case as the living room was quiet, everything was in its place and Jónatan was asleep on the sofa.

If Jónatan had just raped the babysitter, he would hardly have been so relaxed as he sniggered at her account of the staff dinner and sighed with satisfaction as she massaged his feet. The whole thing was completely ridiculous.

Marita sighed again and stretched. The day ahead of her was going to demand all her courage and determination. She would have to call the school to let them know that Kiddi wouldn’t be coming in again, then call in sick at the bank, and then she would check the news media and go through the comments on the online news articles.

It was just as well that most people seemed to believe their side of the story and doubted that the rape accusation could be true, although she was secretly ashamed of her delight when some referred to Katrín Eva as a lying slut. At least it provided her with an outlet, albeit meagre, for the anger that she had been bottling up inside as she did her best to keep a lid on everything.