Our eyes met. A faraway, forgotten look flitted across his face. Then he leaned half forward and patted the horse’s muscular neck. ‘No need,’ he said in a thick voice. ‘Only Jonas understands me anyway.’

‘Did you give the horse that name?’

He shot me a glare, cheeks aflame. ‘And? Why not?’

‘Well…’ It was my turn to shrug. ‘Then…’ I motioned towards the farmhouse ‘…I’d better … Are you coming to eat?’

He sat up straight again. His face was resuming its normal, pale colour. ‘Not yet.’

I smiled at him. ‘I may come one day, anyway, Roar … Andresen.’

‘I don’t use that name anymore.’

‘Which one do you use then?’

‘That’s irrelevant.’ He tugged at the reins and then loosened them. The horse tossed its head and set off at a trot. They passed me as if I wasn’t even there.

I walked back to the house. Occasionally I turned round and watched him. He had resumed his guard duty, back and forth 287along the line of trees. No one would launch a surprise attack from that direction.

Laila Mongstad was sitting in the TV room drinking coffee with Jorunn Tveit and a couple of the others. I greeted everyone around the table. The men had straggly beards, all of them; the women slightly bloated faces, after their over-hectic night lives. There was something dogged and calm about them, as though they were determined to achieve what they had set out to do.

A stout, auburn woman, her hair smelling of food, came in and said lunch was ready in the kitchen.

We all filed in. A single table was set with slices of bread and a variety of meats and cheese, semi-skimmed milk and kefir, and the offer of reheated stew from the day before.

It was a strange meal. The residents were talking in low voices about practical matters. Jorunn Tveit and the stout chef tried to draw us into the conversation now and then, without success.

Laila Mongstad and I were on the outside. Neither of us had scars from needle marks along our arms, neither of us trembled noticeably when we lifted a cup of coffee or a glass of milk to our mouths, and if we found it hard to swallow there were other reasons for that than abstinence.

‘Isn’t Roar coming?’ I asked.

‘He’ll come when it suits him,’ Jorunn Tveit said.

After a while I asked Laila: ‘Did you get everything you wanted?’

‘I just have to take a few pictures.’

After lunch we thanked everyone and went outside. Some of the patients agreed to be in a couple of photographs. Two of them wanted to stand with their backs to the camera, but no one refused. The countryside didn’t either. But then it was greater than all of us. It would still be there, looking much the same long 288after we had all gone for good, when Mongstad was an ancient relic from the past and only the sky and the sea had outlived everything.