‘Mama,’ he whispered gently and smiled. His eyes were so deep, so dark, so gentle, that she felt a sob rise in her throat. She released his hand, returned his smile and forked up some of the scrambled egg as a way to keep the tears from flowing. She wished that she could have had such a moment with her own boy, for Jonni to 188have looked at her with a sincerity in his eyes, something that might have demonstrated his fondness for her, a little warmth.

They ate in silence during the bulletin, but when Olga had swallowed the last morsel of bread, she cleared her throat and began.

‘My dear Omar, your residence application was refused again,’ she said, and saw the warmth in his eyes give way to a well of despair beyond description. ‘The lawyer said that you came to Iceland using identity papers belonging to a man who was murdered in Istanbul.’

She had expected tears, trembling and a flood of questions. But Omar’s reaction was something very different. He picked up his plate, still with a little scrambled egg on it, and hurled it at the wall with all his strength, so that shards rained down around her. She instinctively cowered down, lifting her shoulders and covering her face with her hands. When she looked up, he was gone.

189

79

Ebbi came across as a far more agreeable character than his brother Björn. He invited them in and welcomed Violet warmly. She had already told Daníel that Ebbi was a mechanic, and that was borne out by the sight of the oil ingrained in his hands as he poured coffee for them both. Ebbi lived in a small terraced house above Bústaðavegur, and a strip of the Fossvogur valley could be seen from his kitchen window, between the apartment block across the street and a flourishing spruce that had been planted in the open space outside a couple of decades ago, and which nobody had expected would grow as well as it had.

‘I have to be honest with you, I’m very worried,’ Ebbi said, and sighed as he sat at the end of the kitchen table. ‘I’ve spoken to Björn a few times, but he just snarls back at me, so there’s no way to get out of him exactly when Ísafold left, even. It’s the same with him as it was with her. There’s no point trying to talk to people when they’re that screwed up.’

‘What do you mean, screwed up?’ Violet asked sharply, her tone bordering on accusatory.

‘Getting high on their own supply?’ Ebbi said, framing his statement as a question, as if that would somehow soften the effect of his words. It didn’t seem to have the desired effect; Violet’s lips pursed, and she folded her arms over her chest.