Regardless of whether Ísafold was in Britain or Iceland, it wasn’t like her to ignore their mother. There had to be something she didn’t dare tell her. Maybe she wasn’t sure how to break the news that she and Björn had parted. Perhaps she simply didn’t want to hear her mother say ‘told you so’. Or it could be that Ísafold had something else to hide. Björn might have left her so bruised and battered, she didn’t want anyone to see her, knowing that their mother would ask Áróra to go to Iceland and help her out. On top of that, Ísafold knew that Áróra’s patience was at an end.

But, as Björn said, Áróra would have known that if they had been closer; if she had been a decent sister.

27

11

Olga sighed as she got out of the car and saw that not only had the pavement in front of the building been cleared of dandelions, the parking lot had been swept so carefully that there was barely a grain of sand to be seen. The block with its peeling paint wasn’t the district’s smartest, but the plot around it was without doubt the tidiest. That was down to Omar. He kept on sneaking out into the fresh air, even though she had warned him again and again, asking him to stay inside so as not to draw attention to himself. The police regularly posted photos online of asylum seekers who had gone into hiding after being notified that they would be deported, so there was always the risk that a narrow-minded passerby could recognise him and report him.

‘But I want to help you,’ he always said. ‘Like you help me.’

It made no difference how often she explained to him that he didn’t need to work for his board and lodging, that it was a pleasure for her to provide him with a roof over his head and that it was her duty as a human being to shelter a refugee – giving him a haven from the suffering he had endured. All the same, he was determined to help out, to ease her burden.

He did just that. The food bills hadn’t increased even though he had become part of the household. He cooked dinner for them from such scant ingredients that she couldn’t understand how it could make a full meal. He poured a can of green beans into a pot with a can of coconut milk, a stock cube and three cardamoms, cooking it into a mush they ate with rice two evenings in a row. It had never occurred to her how much doing without fish or meat in every meal would save. He made use of every scrap. Even a tablespoon of leftover food would be kept in a dish in the fridge overnight to appear reheated the next evening.