Eirik nods. ‘The week passed in a blur and I was consumed with work. Every goddamned minute of my days were filled until late in the evening and I had no chance to get back here, so I decided to just wait until she got back to Oslo to try to reason with her again, or pay her off or something. But then, on Friday, when you told me she was one of your clients, and that she’d begged you to come here so she could tell you the so-called truth, I realized I had to get rid of her. So I did.’

‘The Saturday when I was at brunch.’

‘I came up here again. She was a fucking mess. I only did what she would have done herself. She’d clearly even planned it. You said so.’

‘So you came up here and found Leah alone, having lost her baby. And you shot her.’

He stares at me hard.

The enormity of what Eirik has just said dawns on me and my mouth must drop open, and it’s as if my husband suddenly notices me again after being lost in his own moments of confession. ‘Write it, I said. I can’t bear it any—’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no? I said, fucking write it. You know, I still didn’t think I’d have to do this, even after you came here and I came after you. She was dead by then, after all, and I didn’t have to worry that she’d talk. It would get ruled a suicide for sure, especially after you told me about the note. So I told you she’d taken her shoe off and fired the weapon with her toe. That could have been that, Kristina. Leah’s therapist testifying she was suicidal, the note, all of it. It wasn’t until this morning when I came back inside and saw you with her laptop that I realized it was too late. You’d have to go. Look. On the side, there. Yeah, that little dent. I recognized it. I knew you were lying when you said the laptop was yours and when I saw how hysterical you were. I’d feared that she would write something to you, especially when you said she’d begged you to come here, but I assumed I’d shut her up in time.’

‘She actually tried to email me what she wrote on Saturday, when I was still at home. But it never came through, only her email.’

‘Wait. What? There is no phone reception here.’

‘Where is her phone?’

‘I took it with me. When I got to the main road, I messaged her mother. Then I threw the phone into one of the lakes I passed on my way to Bergen.’