Áróra glared at the man in the green coat as he finished his business and leaned in to the glass, giving the receptionist a smile as she did so.

‘I’m here to visit my sister, but I don’t know which ward she said she’s on,’ Áróra said. ‘Could you check for me?’

‘Sure,’ the man replied, and Áróra gave him Ísafold’s name, which he tapped into his computer. He peered at the screen. ‘I can’t see her anywhere,’ he said, and shrugged.

‘Really?’ Áróra said, feigning surprise. ‘Could you check again?’

He shook his head.

‘There’s nobody called Ísafold here.’  23

‘Could she be down at Hringbraut?’

‘No,’ the man said. ‘There’s just one registry for the whole hospital, it doesn’t matter which building someone’s in.’

‘That’s weird,’ Áróra said. ‘Could she have been discharged sometime today or later yesterday? Could you check back a few days?’

The man tapped something in, squinted at the screen in front of him and shook his head again.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t have anyone called Ísafold on record. You’ll have to get in touch with her yourself to make sure.’

If only it were that simple, Áróra thought, but thanked the man and went back into the cool summer’s day outside. At least she could be sure of one thing: Ísafold wasn’t in hospital.

24

10

‘What are you doing here?’

It was more or less the response she had expected from Björn when she turned up at the phone shop, where he worked some kind of part-time job that wasn’t important enough for him to be reachable on the phone. There wasn’t a great deal of warmth between her and Björn. The plan was to get this over with as quickly as possible, find out where she could get hold of Ísafold and take this information to their mother, whether it was a new phone number, a new workplace or a new fractured jaw that was the reason they hadn’t heard from her. Áróra was looking forward to getting this done, so she could go back to the hotel, dress herself up and go for a meal with the guy she had met in the bar the night before, and maybe spend a night with him before catching the midday flight home.

‘It’s a long story,’ she said. ‘Mum asked me to come. She’s going crazy because she can’t reach Ísafold. So I’m after her new phone number or anything that’ll put Mum’s mind at rest. Nobody answers the doorbell at your place so I suppose she’s at work. Is she still at that boutique in the Kringlan shopping centre?’

‘No, she left there a while ago.’