She’s lying between the tussocks like a sheep flat on its back. She’s awake, but so drunk she can’t stand up. There’s a man kneeling next to her, fumbling with her trousers as he tries to pull them off her.

This is one of the pigs that Dad warned me about, and he comes off badly. I look out for my sister.

The bastard runs off howling, with a hand clapped over one eye, a stream of blood dripping from between his fingers onto the green grass of late summer.

66

SUNDAY

27

When the woman came to ask about Ísafold, Olga was relieved that Omar had already come back inside after vacuuming the stairs. She had found the key with its wooden tag and its your week for communal spaces message hanging on her door handle when she had come back from the bakery. Omar had snatched it from her hands, refusing to even countenance that she might do the vacuuming. She had given in. At least he would burn off some energy vacuuming the stairs and the landings, and she admitted to herself that it was a relief to have someone else do it. Her back was so stiff these days.

The ring on the doorbell had been accompanied by a stab of fear. What if someone had seen him vacuuming the stairs, recognised him from the flyers and online posts the police distributed, showing the faces of illegal immigrants, put two and two together, and called the Directorate of Immigration? What would she do if they had come to fetch him – to take him away from her and send him back to his war-torn homeland of blood and bombs? She practically shoved Omar into his room and shut the door behind him, firmly shushing him a couple of times to make it plain that he should keep quiet, and then she picked up the intercom handset. To her surprise there was a mellow woman’s voice on the other end, asking if she could come in and ask a few questions about her sister, Ísafold.

Olga had met Ísafold’s sister before, when Áróra had come to collect her after a fight with Björn, but Olga still looked at her, almost mesmerised: she was so like her neighbour. There was no mistaking this was Ísafold’s younger sister, but bigger-boned and fairer, and clearly more reserved, shyer than Ísafold. Olga could also make out an accent in her Icelandic.67

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ she said. ‘I’m asking around about Ísafold, who lives in the next flat. We haven’t heard anything from her for more than two weeks. Have you seen her, or heard where she might be?’

‘Isn’t she on holiday in Britain?’ Olga asked. ‘Björn said she was abroad, visiting relatives.’