‘No, there doesn’t have to be. It could just be that someone is trying to frighten you. Sleep on it, Jakob.’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘Did you talk to Rebecca today, by the way?’

‘At the funeral? Not a great deal, no.’

‘OK. See you.’

‘Probably. Later. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

Later. This was the magic word that allowed everyone to escape reality. It was the sum of my achievements that day, and I was left feeling like I was flicking through a two-day-old newspaper.

I called Belinda Bruflåt, without success.

So I gave the rest of humanity the punishment they deserved. I didn’t call a single one of them.

*

Thomas and I spent an uneventful Saturday together. Uneventful for everyone except ourselves.

We went swimming in Bergen’s first swimming centre, sat in the sauna like good pals, bought Saturday newspapers as if we were beginning to collect them for the Midsummer Eve bonfire, found ourselves a quiet table in an even quieter café, had a reasonable meal with a bottle of Farris and shared the papers between us over coffee.

I occasionally glanced at him.333

It was odd to sit reading papers with your own son. He had passed the fifteen-year threshold this year; he had his confirmation behind him and life in front. I wasn’t at all sure I envied him.

He had shot up in height. Almost precisely two weeks ago he had grown the last centimetre necessary to pass me on the way up. His hair was darker, he had started to shave – once a month anyway – and new secrets had appeared in his face. There were questions he wouldn’t answer and thoughts he would no longer share. He was a ship about to be launched after fifteen years in dry dock. Very soon he would disappear into the murkiest of all seas: adult life. He was on his way into dangerous waters, with pirates behind every skerry and the child he had once been was disappearing for good. Another one who had removed their angel wings and left them behind on a shelf in an abandoned bedroom somewhere.

That is how children are – like joggers you meet in the night. They come from faraway, come straight at you and then, all of a sudden, they are gone. And you run further into the valley, alone.

After the newspapers had done their bit to ruin our digestion we went back into the street, stopped off at a video rental place and carried on up the hillside.

To the west a colossal, dark-grey bank of cloud was building up. It was like a signal from the interwar period, a warning of the darkness to come, a last, fateful salutation to the autumn’s fugitives.

Once during the evening I asked him: ‘When you got confirmed in the spring, Thomas, did it have any significance for you? I mean, did you really believe or was it just something you did because everyone else … because that’s what you do?’