49

Marita was relieved that Kiddi seemed to have spent most of the day asleep, only appearing to wolf down a couple of slices of bread smeared with peanut butter and jam, then disappearing back into his room without saying a word to her. She had tried to stroke his shoulder while he sat hunched over the kitchen table, but he shrank from her touch so she immediately held back. She didn’t know how she could approach him, unsure if she had enough energy to give him even a little of herself. She was simply glad of every hour that she didn’t have to deal with his reactions to the interview with Katrín Eva’s mother. It had left her shaking with fear and anger when she had read it that morning, and the comments that appeared below the online version hadn’t helped. Most of them seemed to support the standpoint of the woman and her daughter. The public’s sympathy lay with those who whined the loudest, it seemed. She felt as if anyone could say whatever they liked about her family. Many of them pointed out that Jónatan had a son the same age as the girl in question, as if that had any bearing on the matter. Others wondered why they had needed a child minder when the family had a teenage son, as if there was something suspicious about that. Reading between the lines, Marita thought she saw a suggestion that she had asked Katrín Eva to babysit for some underhanded reason, when the truth of it was that she had given in to Kiddi’s laziness, as every time he was asked to look after Klemmi, he moaned as if his life were on the line.

The comment that irritated her most of all was the one from a woman who asked what the man’s wife thought about all this, as if she was supposed to be somehow standing against her own husband on behalf of all women.

Rósa, Katrín Eva’s mother, had said in the interview that that evening ruined her daughter’s life as well as her own, that nothing would be the same again. Marita agreed – this applied to her own 120family as well. Neither she, Jónatan or Kiddi would ever get over this, and she wondered what had prompted Katrín Eva to level this false accusation at Jónatan. What on earth had changed, after the two families had got on so well for more than a year, that had put something like that in her head?

The television was on and Marita realised that the cop show she had been sure had just started was over. Her knitting lay untouched in her lap, so she must have been sitting staring into space for ages. She was startled by her needles clicking against each other as they tumbled out of her hands to the floor, and at the same moment Kiddi stormed out of his room.

‘It’s a fucking lie that she’s a virgin!’ he yelled. ‘She’s definitely been fucked, and I know at least two guys whose dicks she’s sucked!’