And now here he was, thirty years later, singing exactly the same song: ‘Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit, and you ain’t no friend of mine.’

He didn’t sing it badly, either. His deep, rich voice still had power and he could soar to a flattering falsetto when the occasion demanded. The beat was in his spring-loaded legs and his normally bloated face took on a hint of enraptured youth when 39he gave the songs all he had. He jerked his hips and legs and used the microphone stand as a swirling dancing partner, whereas Bella Bruflåt had made uninhibited love to the silvery symbol between her hands.

But he was up against it and never managed to emerge from the shadow of Bella. While he was singing the spell the audience had been under was broken. People chatted again, the clatter of cutlery resumed and there were more orders for beer and wine.

I cast a glance at Jakob and was startled. Here was someone who had not switched off. He was following Johnny’s performance with an intensity worthy of a far greater artiste. His eyes were aglow, his face gleamed, his lips moved in time with the words Johnny was singing, as though Jakob were on the stage, backing him, as he had done once, and the fingers around his beer glass were moving up and down an invisible scale, a transparent keyboard.

I cleared my throat, but he didn’t react. A thin film of sweat glistened on his brow and his head was moving to the beat.

It was a kind of jealousy. The microphone stand had once been Jakob’s dancing partner and now she was leaning back in Johnny’s arms and staring intently into his eyes. The musicians behind him had been Jakob’s own sparring partners, and we – the faceless audience in the room – had been on our knees, begging for his music, his phrasing, his florid rock ‘n’ roll renditions. Now we belonged to others, every single one of us. And Jakob was down among us himself, equally anonymous, equally bereft of character traits and identity, no longer under the dazzling lights.

When the number was over and Johnny had left the stage with a half-hearted wave to the audience, Jakob muttered, as though to himself: ‘Why do the women we love always fall for men we don’t like, Varg?’40

After a tiny pause for thought I answered: ‘Isn’t it more the other way around? We never like the men the women we love fall for?’

And I realised I was right. It had been jealousy.

On the stage the band was alone again. The dance floor filled. Bodies clung to bodies, eyes sought eyes, and some people sat alone looking inward, a blank smile on their lips. As it always was, and as it had always been.

Then Jakob leaned across the table and half stood up. ‘Fancy coming with me backstage and saying hi? To Johnny?’

‘Now?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK.’

We stood up and went backstage, in search of lost time.