‘Well, you know what Dagný’s like,’ she said. ‘You can’t quite be sure what’s true and what isn’t. Ísafold told me that they had been making accusations against her, but she wasn’t taking any painkillers, so I reckoned it had to be some kind of a misunderstanding.’

‘There was no misunderstanding,’ Áróra snapped. ‘Dagný has a problem with her hip, so she needs those painkillers. When she went to fetch her prescription she was told it had already been collected. When she asked to see who had signed for it, it turned out it was Ísafold.’80

‘Isn’t there a chance that Dagný asked Ísafold to collect her prescription and then forgot about it? You know she can be a bit—’

‘Mum, no,’ Áróra said. ‘When Dagný called Ísafold to ask for an explanation, she slammed the phone down on her. Then she blocked the whole family on Facebook, and none of them have heard a word from her since.’

‘Your dad’s family tend to be over-dramatic…’

Áróra withstood the temptation to put the phone down on her mother herself, but she was livid. Her mother had obviously been aware of the situation with the painkillers, but had chosen to keep it to herself and had woven a web of explanations and excuses for Ísafold’s behaviour – as she always did.

‘I believe them, Mum,’ she said slowly and clearly. ‘And you should have told me about this.’

She ended the call, hoping that she had been suitably courteous, while also making her dissatisfaction plain. Tomorrow she would call her mother again and make it clear that she had to tell her everything she knew about Ísafold’s life in Iceland, without keeping anything back.

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Omar wolfed down the egg sandwiches Olga had made to have before the rice pudding, and complained yet again about them not being able to keep chickens on the balcony. However many times she explained why they couldn’t, he continued to describe how they could close the balcony off with some netting, and then have four hens, or even six. They would pay for themselves in no time – an egg a day from each hen.

‘There are rules for blocks of flats,’ Olga said yet again. ‘No animals allowed.’

‘But the guy on the third floor has a dog,’ he persisted. ‘So why can’t we have chickens?’

‘Because of the noise, Omar. Hens cluck all the time, and there’d be the smell.’

‘But once the neighbours start getting eggs from us, they’d be happy and would forget the noise and the smell.’