I shouldn’t be looking forward to anything while I don’t know how she’s feeling. Most of all, I shouldn’t be looking forward to making money. That’s not only selfish, but contemptible, in a way that only sheer greed can be held in contempt.

I’m not a good sister. I’m not Ísafold’s good sister.

198

SUNDAY

83

‘This plate is nicer than the other one,’ Omar said firmly, again offering a worn china plate he had bought in a charity shop to make up for the one he had smashed.

Olga sighed and decided to give up trying to explain to him that it wasn’t the broken plate that had upset her so much, but his reaction – the fury, the violence that was implicit in hurling something towards her, and the fear it had awakened inside her.

She let her knitting fall into her lap, accepted the plate, and gave him a tired smile.

‘Thank you, Omar. That’s a really pretty plate.’

‘I like it when crockery has flower patterns, not just plain white, or like that stuff from IKEA. And there’s gold around the edge, look.’

Most of the gilding had long worn off, as had happened with her old mother’s best plates, the ones Olga had taken to the charity shop along with so many of her belongings.

‘Thank you, Omar,’ she repeated, and he finally sat down. He shifted a few times in the armchair and looked at her intently. She took the knitting from her lap and put it aside.

‘I am so sorry, Mamma,’ he said. ‘I am sad that I broke your plate. I don’t understand why I can’t stay here in Iceland. I want to work. I want to look after you as if you really were my mother. Because your son is dead, and I can be your son. It’s not good to be an old woman and alone.’

Olga felt the emotion begin to choke her, just as it had done yesterday.

‘That’s what I wish for as well, my dear Omar,’ she said. ‘But because you came here with false papers, there’s nothing more 199that can be done. The papers belong to a man who was murdered…?’

She slid a questioning tone into the last couple of words, to leave him no alternative but to answer her, but without making a direct accusation of her own.

‘I knew that the man on the passport was dead,’ he said. ‘The guy who sold it to me said so. But I didn’t know he had been murdered. I knew nothing about that.’ He shook his head, and Olga looked into his dark eyes. There was no room in those eyes for dishonesty. There were even tears glistening in his long, black eyelashes, and little pearls dropped to his cheeks as he blinked. ‘I swear it, Mamma. I didn’t know that the man had been killed.’