‘We almost have to go down to the sea,’ she said. ‘You can see the house from a distance. It’s big and white … and there’s an old red outbuilding.’

Then we were there. The two buildings stood on a small plateau facing Fens fjord, which lay still and dark like a massive oil slick. Some deserted islands lay like abandoned observatories in the dark water and on the other side, in Masfjorden, the mountain mass towered into the air, steep and inhospitable.

We stopped by the gate, opened it and followed the drive up to the buildings.

The countryside around us was strangely pale, as if summer and autumn had sucked out all the pigment and only the colourless 276remnants had been left for December. The cornfield we drove past was winter yellow, the grass a matt yellowish-brown, the trees in the copse behind the houses black and leafless, and even the sky arching above us had a stunning core of white in all the blue. It was like walking through an aquarelle painting in which the artist had used much too much water when mixing the colours. I parked the car.

A youth on a dark-brown horse trotted slowly past the copse, his face turned towards us, long, fluttering hair, red checked shirt and faded jeans. At the other end of the field four or five young people were hoeing the ground with an energy that befitted the brightness. From inside the outbuilding a cow mooed in a long protest at being incarcerated, and through one of the windows in the farmhouse came the sound of typing. Some sparrows were tentatively – and unconvincingly – testing their voices for the season’s carols, and a well-fed cat sidled along one wall, away from the interlopers.

We walked up onto the veranda in front of the house and knocked on the door. As no one reacted we opened the door and went in. A sign showed us the way to the office. Behind the green door we heard a typewriter hacking holes in the air around it. We knocked again, a voice told us to come in and we obeyed. Laila Mongstad first, followed by me.

The woman who turned her head from the typewriter to the door was in her mid-thirties, buxom and stiff at the same time, strongly built and rounded, her fair hair combed back tightly over her scalp and held in a bun at the top. She was wearing a shirt, jumper and cords, without any make-up or jewellery, her dialect part of the nature around us. She crossed her arms in a way that signalled authority, yet her smile was open and warm-hearted.277

‘And you would be…?’ she asked.

‘Laila Mongstad. You’ve kindly allowed me to write a news story about this place.’

‘Oh, that’s right. Great. Nice to meet you. I’m Jorunn Tveit.’ The woman rose and shook hands with Laila.

Then she turned to me with her eyebrows raised.

‘Veum. I’d hoped to have a word with one of your patients here. Ruth Solheim.’