There’s a strange little stuffed animal sitting in a chair – it looks like a child’s toy. I pick it up and quickly place it back in its seat – it feels wrong to snoop around and touch Leah’s possessions. I walk into the kitchen and stand by the sink. The workbench is beneath a window, looking out at the empty valley, the lake and the white-capped mountains beyond. A chipped mug stands to the side of the sink and I pick it up. It bears a faded crest from Stanford University and I recall that Leah went there for a semester on an exchange program. It occurs to me that even as her therapist, there is so much I don’t know about Leah and her life. In this moment she could be anywhere and with anyone, and there is a real chance I’ll never see her again or learn what brought about her abrupt change in behavior.

Finding myself standing here, in her space, in the place she loves, looking at a quirky hand-made key holder and a framed poster for her first novel hung side by side on the wall, her walking boots carefully placed under a wooden bench, and a lingering scent of what I now realize is Leah’s perfume, intensely familiar to me, I feel her absence acutely and just want to get to the bottom of this.

It’s easy to understand why she loves coming here. The cabin is my oasis, she often says, and this makes perfect sense. And yet, it’s quite a radical thing to do, for a lone woman to come somewhere like this on a regular basis. What, exactly, does she do here? I feel a strange jealousy of Leah’s bravery, of her obvious connection to nature and commitment to this simple life – it’s very far removed from the comfortable life I lead in central Oslo.

The cabin is miles away from the nearest dwelling, set in woods so thick I doubt one would be able to pick out the house from above. It has no modern amenities. What it does have is beautiful wood carvings, lovely rounded blonde timber walls that I imagine would take on a golden glow from the hearth when lit, and books everywhere, leaving the sweet, subtle scent of well-thumbed pages and firewood on the air.