Elisabeth feels strange to be somewhere other than the ordered, predictable world of Villa Vinternatt, even though she comes here overnight once every month. Kristina picked her up in the late afternoon after spending the day in Drøbak with Camilla and the kids, and they got stuck in unusually heavy traffic heading into Oslo on the E6. They talked about what had happened since they’d last seen each other less than a week before, but Elisabeth fell silent as Oslo came into view, a gray blur in a wide valley, held in between dark pine forests on one side and the shimmering fjord on the other. She spent her whole life in this city and its outskirts, but since what happened with Andreas and getting sober and living at Villa Vinternatt, Elisabeth feels trepidation at returning, as if bad memories will spring forth from Oslo’s streets, chasing her down.

At Kristina’s house, she slips her shoes off and places her weekend bag down on the gently heated wooden floorboards of the impressive hallway, and stands a moment looking at the familiar pictures on the walls. Elisabeth is always momentarily taken aback by just how grand Kristina’s apartment is, but then again, she is married to a wealthy politician and has a successful career in her own right. She remembers living in a similar apartment just down the road when Andreas was alive, though the circumstances were certainly different. Theirs had been a world of painting, passion and wild drug parties.

Elisabeth stops for a moment in front of the black-and-white photograph of herself, Trine and Kristina, taken at graduation from high school, just weeks before they set off for South America. Kristina comes back into the hallway, having gone ahead into the kitchen.

‘Look at us,’ says Elisabeth, softly.

‘Yeah,’ says Kristina. ‘Come.’

Elisabeth follows her back into the kitchen. On the granite countertop is an opened bottle of red wine, an Italian amarone. Outside it’s raining lightly, a relief after a relentlessly hot August. Elisabeth feels suddenly excited about the coming fall and what it might bring. The vernissage at Villa Vinternatt had gone beyond all expectations, and many of her paintings were sold that same evening. She’d had several additional commissions in the months since, as well as an interview request from one of Norway’s major newspapers, Dagbladet. Elisabeth also can’t wait to get properly started with the art book curated by Ella Victor. Ella had been to see her twice more at Villa Vinternatt since the first time and on both occasions they’d ended up talking for hours and hours, and it had felt like a beginning friendship. It was nice to laugh with someone and to discover common ground. It was fun, Elisabeth realized. Such an easy, light word – fun, but how important and difficult, too.