She had no idea how she would be able to face Daníel again, not that she owed him anything. It wasn’t as if there had been anything between them, and these days women were free to choose their own lovers. And she was as free as could be. All the same, she had the feeling she had trampled on something tender between them, or something that should have been between them. How stupid could you get?

Then there was Agla. Had she really said what Áróra thought she had said? Could she have known who Áróra was, and therefore had been able to guess why she was tangled up with Hákon?

Áróra squinted into the morning sun that shone in through the window of the hotel’s breakfast room, illuminating every speck of dust. This was one of the things her mother had complained about while she had lived in Iceland, that she could never quite dust well enough.177

The breakfast room was practically empty. The tourists catching a morning flight home had already left for the airport, and others weren’t yet awake. An old man sat in one corner reading a newspaper and slurping coffee, and at the breakfast buffet a plump American couple were discussing the spread of food in loud voices.

‘Could you tell me what that is?’ the woman asked Áróra, pointing at a dish on the table.

‘Herring,’ Áróra replied. ‘Pickled herring. It’s good with eggs.’

The woman laughed and wrinkled her nose. It was clear that she had no intention of trying anything unfamiliar.

‘Where are you from?’ Áróra asked as she reached for a plate. She didn’t particularly want to know more about these people, but decided to be polite since they had spoken to her.

‘Austin, Texas,’ the woman said, her husband behind her nodding enthusiastically in agreement.

‘Is this the first time you’ve been to Iceland?’ Áróra asked amiably as she spooned a generous portion of bacon onto her plate.

‘Yes, first time here, and we can’t wait to see everything, the hot springs, the waterfalls, the sheep.’

The woman laughed, and Áróra smiled.

‘Nice to meet you,’ she mumbled and went to sit at a table by the window. She was so hungry that her hands trembled, her body demanding sustenance after the night, and she shovelled the bacon and eggs down so hastily, she made herself nauseous again. She sat still for a while, sipping water from a glass while the hangover guilt again welled up inside her. In some strange way she felt that she was betraying Ísafold – sitting here with a hangover after a night’s drinking with a man she was staking out in the hope of making some money, instead of searching for her sister. But where should she be searching?