‘You’re working?’ asked Elísa, who all of a sudden appeared in the library with a questioning look on her face.

‘Yes. I can work through the computer.’

The girl’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

‘So you get unlimited computer time? On the net?’

‘Yes. Or rather, no. I have an exemption: I can have a couple of hours a day. But they track all my online traffic so I can’t go on Facebook and things like that.’

Agla didn’t understand why she felt she needed to be apologetic; maybe it was because of the endless debate in the media about financial criminals getting better treatment in prison than other convicts.

‘Too posh for the laundry, are you?’

Elísa had undoubtedly heard the same debate at some point.

‘I work for an accountancy firm, completing tax returns for individuals and small companies. Just tax returns. It’s not exactly exciting.’

‘Hey, then you can do my tax return!’

Agla shook her head in surprise. In a matter of seconds this person could go from downright accusatory to amiable. She couldn’t figure her out. Perhaps she was simply the kind of person who came out with the first thing that entered her head.

‘I could do that,’ Agla said. ‘But then you’d have to be nice to me.’

A broad grin spread across Elísa’s face and she leaned against the bookshelf, tugged her T-shirt free of her waistband and lifted it to reveal a strip of bare belly, rocking her hips provocatively.

‘Mmm,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes. ‘How nice do you want?’

Agla shot to her feet, hurried to the door and rang the bell repeatedly.

After the warder had come to take Elísa back to the female wing, Agla sat back down at the computer, wracked with sobs. Somehow Elísa’s joke had hit her badly, like a punch to an already sore belly. Thoughts that she had long kept in check flew through her mind in a series of flashing images – all showing a tangle of sorrow and suppressed desires. Underneath it all, like a deep bass note, was the hollow, echoing emptiness that had filled her heart ever since the day she sat on a box in the empty house, trying to understand Sonja’s message.

I’m sorry. I can’t do this <3.

After the numbness of the first few days had come the disbelief that made her want to laugh the whole thing off; laugh at her own foolishness in buying a house for them; laugh at the joy she had allowed to grow in her heart; and laugh coldly and cruelly at her own stupidity. Then there had been the time when the heart Sonja had tacked onto the end of her message – a clumsy left arrow and a three – began to take on new meaning. Agla had begun to wonder if one day Sonja would call her from the airport, as she had once done, begging to be fetched. Then there had been the time when Agla searched for Sonja. It had ended with the terrible moment when she found her in London.