He opened the second message and the flood of questions continued. This demonstrated an incredible optimism on her part. Surely she didn’t expect him to answer all these questions by text message? Normally he kept clear of journalists and wouldn’t have hesitated to delete these messages right away.

But the last question in the series troubled him:

What is the nature of the business conducted by yourself and William Tedd with Icelandic aluminium producers?

5

If she had imagined during the weeks before she’d sat down in front of the radiator with the noose around her neck that she couldn’t possibly have felt worse, she was wrong. Those days had been a walk in the park compared to waking up after trying to kill herself.

The pain of renewing her acquaintance with life, having already waved it a final goodbye, was so unreal, she wasn’t even able to feel angry with herself for making a mess of it. She opened her eyes and saw that everything around her was white, which told her she had to be in hospital. She closed her eyes again and hoped that she might slip back into unconsciousness. But it was hopeless. She was awake and a prison officer she knew was called Guðrún was in a chair at her side, leafing through a magazine.

‘How are you feeling?’ Guðrún asked, ringing a bell.

Under the circumstances, this was a bizarre question, and there was only one possible reply: bad. Agla tried to form the word but all that came out of her throat was an indistinct growl that could have been made by a wild animal. That would have to be a wounded, angry animal.

A woman in white scrubs came in and looked her over.

‘Don’t try to talk,’ she said. ‘Just rest and drink cold water. Your throat is still swollen and you’ve not long come off the ventilator, which will have left your throat sore as well. I’ll get you some water and painkillers, and the doctor will be along to talk to you.’

She looked into Agla’s eyes, and laid a hand on her arm, squeezing it briefly. Then she smiled and left the room. This tiny sign of human warmth was like a punch to the stomach, and Agla could feel tears flowing from her eyes and down onto the pillow. Self-pity wasn’t something she made a habit of, regardless of how tough things might be, but somehow this was pushing humiliation to a new level. A screwed-up attempt at death had become the perfect summation of a screwed-up life.

The nurse returned with a painkiller that she pumped through the cannula in the back of Agla’s hand. Then she spooned up an ice cube from the water glass at Agla’s side and lifted it to her lips. Agla opened her mouth like an obedient child and took the ice cube just as she felt the morphine take over. In a second, everything became a little better. The tears stopped flowing from her eyes, and she felt there was a security in having Guðrún at her side, again deep in a magazine.