She did so despite knowing that simple statements like that had no impact on Nanna. Nanna took a swig from a plastic bottle, contents unknown, without dropping her gaze.

“Pfft, I’m full of shit,” said Jeanette. “Obviously, I’ve never been in her house.”

No comment. Jeanette felt ill at ease, and as though she had behaved disrespectfully. As if that woman with the long ponytail had deserved what had happened to her.

“I didn’t get to grieve,” she said anyway. “But it was such a damn pity about that blonde and their cute kids.”

Nanna raised her eyebrow and took another swallow.

“It was a pity,” said Jeanette, her tone gentler. “But, you know . . . You’re only human. I needed comforting too. Her life would still have been smashed to pieces, she just didn’t know. He would have left her for me, if . . .”

She stopped herself. She was on thin ice again—she didn’t want to go there.

“Can I have a sip of that?” she asked to divert attention.

Nanna passed her the bottle but wasn’t taken in.

“If . . .?” she said encouragingly.

“If whatever it was that got in the way hadn’t,” Jeanette replied, hoping for a smile at least.

She didn’t get one. Jeanette drank, the spirit creating a pleasant warm feeling inside her chest. She took care to drink a little more before returning the bottle.

“Hotel or what?” Nanna said.

Jeanette didn’t understand what she meant at first. She shook two cigarettes out of the pack and offered one to Nanna. She lit them both. Then the penny dropped.

“Oh right—no. We couldn’t afford it. And it was too risky. Someone would have recognised us and drawn uncomfortable conclusions.”

Then she leant forward and cupped her hand around her mouth to stop anyone overhearing, even though no one was nearby.

“We fucked in the boot of the car,” she said in a low voice.

Nanna pursed her lips and nodded. She squinted at the rain as it increased in intensity. Jeanette wanted follow-up questions. Having ended up here with Nanna by chance, she wanted to talk.

“In Peter’s car,” she clarified—as if it mattered.

But it had been a wonderful time, hadn’t it? Now that she came to think about it without being melancholy. She picked up her own bottle from the rucksack, not wanting to take further advantage of Nanna.

“We would head out into the countryside in the afternoons. Anywhere, really. Somewhere different each time. We would stop on small tracks in the forest where no one went in winter. Tractor tracks—a strip of grass running up the middle, you know. We once stopped on the drive outside an abandoned cabin—an old man turned up with a shotgun and knocked on the window. Jesus, what a fright! That was the only time anyone discovered us; otherwise we were very discreet.”