He smiled. ‘I drive carefully,’ he said, getting back on the bike, closed his visor and patted the seat behind him.

Áróra stood still for a moment, wondering whether to decline, hand back the helmet and walk away. But she knew she would be furious with herself, and, anyway, there was a flutter of excitement in her stomach. She hadn’t sat on a motorcycle since she was a child.

A few moments later they were hurtling along Sæbraut as she 117tightly held on to him, feeling dizzy at seeing the tourists walking along by the sea, the cars they overtook and Mount Esja in the distance. She closed her eyes, and as she could hear little through the helmet’s thick padding, her senses of sight and hearing took a back seat and others became more sensitive. Her skin sensed the closeness of Daníel’s strong, leather-clad body pressed against hers, so close that there was a stream of heat between them that she felt took on colours of its own, a glowing, deep pink-red … and it was as if her sense of time had been paused, because she was startled when the bike came to a standstill.

She was unsteady on her feet as she dismounted and pulled off the helmet.

Daníel laughed. ‘Were you frightened?’

She shook her head as she looked around, trying to work out where they were. They seemed to be out of the city now, in a small valley surrounded by steep hills with a lake at the bottom. Some distance away she could see the red roofs of the old Vífilsstaðir TB hospital, so this had to be Vífilsstaðir lake.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That was fun.’

It wasn’t what she had wanted to say, the words not strong enough, but she couldn’t explain to him just how fantastic this short bike ride had been, how thrilling and how indecently exciting.

‘Be my guest,’ he said, pointing to a thicket above the road. ‘Dinner is served.’

He strode through the undergrowth, and she followed him into a small clearing surrounded by birches, where he spread out a blanket and placed a bag on it.

‘Aha,’ she said. ‘A picnic?’

He sat on the blanket, opened the bag, and she sat beside him. He plucked out cans of mixed malt and orange, and smoked lamb sandwiches wrapped in foil.

‘You’re going the full traditional?’

‘Sure,’ he laughed and handed her a sandwich.118

They sat and ate in silence. The trees provided shelter, and the sun was still high in the sky. Below them the lake shone like a mirror, the landscape reflected in its surface, and Áróra felt her heart swell inside her, as if it was demanding more space to grow, to hold on to this evening, the sun’s brightness and the land around them.