Vigdís, Gunna and Bogga were sitting at the dining table, staring at Elísa as if mesmerised. Agla sat with them and looked her up and down. Elísa had now encountered a hairbrush, parting her dark hair on one side and tucking it behind her ear. She wore dark make-up around her eyes and a pair of skull earrings. Agla had to admit that the girl had good looks, despite her peculiar style. She wore a singlet underneath the apron; Agla could see a screed of reading material tattooed on her slim arms.

‘There you go!’ she announced in triumph, placing the pan on the table next to a bowl of rice. ‘Pad-ped – genuine Thai street food.’

Vigdís left the room to fetch the bookkeeper, who had a habit of arriving for dinner on the dot of seven, while the time was now only just six-thirty. They all sat a little shyly around the table as Elísa heaped food onto their plates as if they were children.

‘Are you going to tell us the rest of the story?’ Vigdís asked as she took her seat. This humble request confirmed Agla’s feeling that they were just small children who had been placed in a home, and Elísa was the exciting new kid in the group.

‘Where was I? Sure, that’s right. Well, I was on another job before and I’d swallowed around fifty bags and I thought I was going to burst! It’s true, I looked down at my belly and thought I had to be pregnant. There was this massive bump there. Then I started retching and crying, and the Boss said I had to get down another ten. That was way too much for me. I suppose I’m too small to carry that much, cos some of it went right through me and ended up in the toilet on the plane. I couldn’t bring myself to hook it out, wash it off and swallow it again, like we’d been told to, so I just flushed it away. The Boss wasn’t impressed with that.’

‘Is this something we should be talking about at a meal time?’ Agla asked. Her voice was hoarse and low, but it was enough to stop Elísa’s tale.

‘Don’t ruin the story!’ Vigdís said.

‘No, don’t stop,’ Gunna echoed.

The bookkeeper and Bogga said nothing, but glared at Agla. She was well on the way to ruining the most excitement they had experienced for a long time.

‘Anyway,’ Elísa continued, ‘I reckon that was when they decided I could be sacrificed. At any rate, that last time they sent me with not very much, and with it packed really badly, from Panama to Holland.’

She fell silent and ate silently for a while, and Agla regretted having snapped at her.

‘I’ll wash up,’ Agla said, as a way of making amends.

Elísa looked up at her in surprise.

‘Thanks,’ she said with a smile, and somehow Agla found herself wincing at the sight of the smile and the look that accompanied it.