It would be perfect to bring some fresh spirit into that house. Although she hadn’t set foot in it for years, she had never had the heart to put it on the market.

‘Well, if you’re happy about it,’ the counsellor said, as if she wasn’t satisfied with the idea herself.

‘Of course I’m happy with it,’ Agla said as firmly as she could without being downright rude. ‘I’ve made her the offer, and I’m delighted to be able to. It’s completely ridiculous that Elísa won’t be allowed out on probation if she doesn’t have anywhere to live.’

This was one of the system’s strangely inflexible rules that she couldn’t fathom. Each prisoner was required to demonstrate that they had a place to live before they could be released, even though everyone was sent to the Vernd probation hostel for a while once their sentence at Hólmsheiði was over. Wherever she lived, Agla couldn’t see how Elísa would be able to pay her way. The wages for the job she had been able to arrange, behind the supermarket tills at Bónus, wouldn’t go far.

The counsellor set her lips in a firm line, as if she wanted to stop herself from responding. She inspected Agla with an expression that could have been one of exhaustion or disgust. For a second it occurred to Agla that the counsellor knew what she and Elísa had got up to the previous evening, but that was impossible. They had been in a corner of Elísa’s cell, where they couldn’t be seen through the peephole in the door, and they’d been as quiet as possible, so nobody passing by could have heard their nervous giggles and stifled gasps. All the same, Agla could feel her heart pumping blood into her skin, and she blushed to the roots of her hair.

‘As the landlord, you need to sign this,’ the counsellor said, sliding a form across the table. It detailed her consent for ankle-tag monitoring equipment to be installed in the house. Agla signed it and slid it back.

‘Well,’ the counsellor said. ‘We need to discuss your own move to Vernd and your release on probation. It says in your file that you are financially well off and live comfortably. But the staff here say that you show considerable apprehension about being released.’

‘No,’ Agla said. ‘Not any longer.’

‘No nerves at the thought of walking out of here and getting to grips with life outside?’

The counsellor leaned forwards and gave her a friendly smile.

‘Not at all,’ Agla said, standing up. ‘I can’t get out of this cage soon enough.’

49

It was as if his mother could sense that this time he really wanted her to go to bed early, because she did just the opposite. She sat in front of the television, drinking slowly, making weird comments about the presenters on the news, mostly reflecting on their clothes or their family connections. On a normal evening he would have enjoyed it and laughed with her, sending a few examples of her odd turns of phrase to Júlía, but now he needed some time with the middle floor of the house to himself for a while – before his father came home.