She cast around, found her matches, lit the cigarette and drew the smoke deep into her body. Her hands were trembling, her eyes fixed on a spot on the floor between us. ‘Then he was back again. But this time he wasn’t alone. There was someone with him. And I heard him – Pappa – mumble something, tear the duvet off me again, felt hands on my thighs … on my … I wanted to scream, but then I remembered Sissel, who was lying in the bed beside mine – four years old. I couldn’t … She would’ve been scared out of her wits. I tried to resist, but he – Pappa – was standing behind the headboard and holding my arms while the other man – the one called Harry, the dopey bass player – lay on top of me, tried to kiss me, stank of beer, squeezed my breasts, took me … forced his way into me, and was finished in ten seconds. Afterwards the same again, Arild Hjellestad – the one I thought was so funny – and I lay still, just crying, thinking about other things, but couldn’t stop myself … There was something new this time. It wasn’t only Pappa. He stood beside the bed watching, and when they left I heard him, Pappa, that is, say: “Anyone else want some?” I heard loud voices, but after a while they came, two more, first of all the one I didn’t know, but who, I found out later, was called Olsen … and in the end, in the end…’

‘Jakob Aasen.’

She nodded. ‘But do you know what was the worst of all this?’

I shook my head.

‘When it was all over and I could finally sit up in bed, straighten my pyjamas, the duvet, I saw Sissel’s face in the bed beside me. Her head between the bars of her cot, the staring eyes … I had no idea how long she’d been awake, but if she’d seen all that! She couldn’t understand it. She was too small to understand anything. The expression on her face that night has 362haunted me all my life. I’ve seen it every day. I think that was when I really decided to tell Mamma.’

‘And how did she react?’

‘Of course she was shocked. But afterwards she said we should just forget it, we shouldn’t do anything about it.’

‘So you didn’t go to the police or any other authorities?’

‘We … she left Pappa that day. We moved out, first into a hotel, later a variety of flats. And then she said he wasn’t my real father, he had no hold over me, I should just forget he existed.’

‘Did she say who your real father was?’

‘Not then. Only a long time afterwards.’ She winced and said quietly: ‘Even … him! As if it was predestined that I would be … chosen to be sullied in that way.’ With sudden composure she added: ‘It destroyed my life. I never recovered. I could never feel anything. The memory of it just numbed me. All the other stuff – drugs, misery – stems from that. Do you know…? Since then I’ve never slept with anyone.’