When the canvas has entirely been engulfed by the flames, I walk slowly back through the big room to the kitchen, mindful of my bruised foot, the flames still dancing on my retina. I pour a glass of wine from a carton in the fridge and drink it straight down standing at the window, looking across the rooftops at the black bones of trees in the royal park. I hear Eirik’s key in the lock. I realize I don’t know what time it is or even whether I have had dinner. It feels as though I’ve just woken up from a nightmare – those stunned, spent moments of blinking in the dark, grateful to emerge into a world more peaceful than the one you just left behind. I move quickly now, and step into my husband’s arms as he walks through the door and he lets out a little sound of surprise at this onslaught of affection, but he holds me tight and smooths down my hair at the back of my skull firmly and soothingly, the way you’d stroke a beloved, sleepy dog.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Eirik, finally breaking our embrace and kicking his shoes off. I take his camel jacket and hang it in the cupboard, brushing off a few stray droplets of rain. My husband’s face is creased and pale in the low light of the hallway, and he rubs at his eyes and massages his temples.

‘I burned Elisabeth’s painting,’ I say. ‘The one in the dining room.’

Eirik stares at me. ‘What? Why?’

‘I couldn’t bear to look at it for another moment.’

‘But… I thought you loved that painting?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps it would have been a good idea to donate it to her mother? Or to Villa Vinternatt?’

‘It was its very existence I couldn’t bear. I wanted it gone. It fucked with my head.’

Eirik looks at me carefully, his eyebrows knitting together over the bridge of his nose. ‘Kristina. This sounds a little odd.’

‘I know. I just thought you should know. There’s some, uh, debris in the dining room. I’ll clear it up.’

‘Look. I know things are still quite raw. And that work is stressful. You’ve got quite a few new clients at the moment, right? But right now, up until the end of November, we just have to keep it together. I need you to keep it together. This is the most important time of our lives. We can’t let anything get in the way of this. Think about how hard we’ve worked, how much we’ve both sacrificed to get here. Less than a month to go. You have to let go, Kristina. Let it go. You did everything you could possibly have done, you—’