He was taken by surprise when he looked outside: the woman standing there looked like Ísafold, just a larger, fairer version of her. It took him a moment to realise that this had to be Ísafold’s sister, who lived in Britain. He remembered her. From the time she collected her sister from his place. Out in the car park was a car she had left running, with a little red badge from the car-hire company on the windscreen. It was only to be expected. Sooner or later, this had to happen.

Grímur stood still and watched the woman. She rang the bell a second time and shuffled her feet on the steps. Then she peered upward at the building’s walls, and he stepped back in alarm from the window, not certain whether their eyes had met for a fraction of a second.

He badly needed the toilet, and although he was determined to wait by the window until she had given up and gone, he couldn’t hold it any longer, rushed to the bathroom and noisily emptied his bladder. He washed his hands and splashed his face with cold water to wake himself up properly, and as he looked out of the window again with the towel in his hands, he saw that Cold as 20stupid Arab talking to the woman. Him sticking his nose in was only to be expected. It was as if there was absolutely nothing that was out of bounds to the boy. He wished there was a pane he could open so that he could hear their conversation, but judging by the Arab’s body language, he was telling her that he hadn’t seen Ísafold. He shook his head and gestured with his hands in every direction, as he always did when he tried to make himself understood in that hopeless mixture of Icelandic and English, while the woman listened and nodded.

When the woman got into her hire car and drove away, Grímur was able to breathe more easily. He choked back the irritation that welled up inside him when he saw the Arab still out there with a broom in his hands, sweeping clean the pavement in front of the entrance. It was true that he couldn’t sit still. Olga said she had told him at least a hundred times to stay inside, not to draw attention to himself, but the lad wouldn’t be told. That was his problem. Olga had asked Grímur to keep an eye out for him in case he sneaked out, but Grímur had given up on that. He wasn’t going to babysit a grown man. The boy would just have to take what was coming to him, just like everyone else.