He looked at me again. ‘Varg Veum?’ His eyes slowly lit up. He remembered me. We remembered one another.

‘Hello, Johnny,’ I said.43

‘Hello,’ he answered sullenly. Then he opened the door wide. ‘Come on in. Say hello to…’

Bella Bruflåt was sitting on the only chair inside, in the same outfit she had been wearing on the stage, her legs slightly apart and her stomach a little more prominent under the same tight, sweat-soaked T-shirt. She wore an expression of disdain and annoyance, and she had the same red patches down her neck that Johnny had. Perhaps it was contagious.

Johnny didn’t look at her, and as he moved into the room, he was unable to hide the fact that he had a slight stoop, as though he had problems standing up straight.

I glanced at Jakob and mumbled: ‘Got a touch of lumbago, Johnny?’

He turned sharply to me and snapped: ‘My arse.’

‘Yes, I’ve heard it can affect the nether regions. With some people.’

Bella laughed, a guffaw that came from somewhere deep, deep inside her. Then she raised a forefinger to her brow and saluted us with a condescending smile on her rather too chubby jaw. ‘Old boys on a passing visit?’

Johnny made another attempt to straighten up, coughed thinly and said: ‘This is Bella. Bella Bruflåt.’

Jakob’s face was still as stiff. ‘You don’t need to tell us. We saw her show. It was…’

‘Electrifying,’ I completed, and she looked at me in a way that made me cringe with embarrassment. It was twenty-two years since I had seen such a brazen stare. High up a back-alley in Marseilles.

It was obviously her dressing room. The large, shaggy rabbit-skin coat hanging on the stand was one of a kind – and emphatically feminine. On the dressing table there was an open vanity case containing enough to keep the Salvation Army going 44for ten years, and, naturally enough, two sets of matching bra and G-string were casually slung over the mirror. One was blood-red and the other black.

‘I suppose you’ve never seen Jakob on the stage, have you, Bella?’ Johnny growled.

She eyed Jakob provocatively, sucked her teeth and slowly shook her head.

‘We used to perform together.’ He patted Jakob lightly on the shoulder. ‘We were the best in Bergen, weren’t we, Jakob?’

‘So why did you pack it in?’ Bella asked.

Jakob met her gaze. ‘We just … I just … stopped. How old are you?’

She pouted, made a smacking sound and cooed: ‘Twenty-four. But I’ve been at it since I was thirteen.’

Johnny guffawed.

‘Singing in a band, I mean,’ she giggled.

I shifted position, feeling left out. Despite the age difference, all three belonged to the same world, while I might as well have been on Mars.

However, Bella – who was democratic in her dealings with men – turned her gaze on me and said: ‘And which band did you play in? The Neanderthals?’

Even Jakob laughed. ‘No, I never even got past first post. Johnny was ahead of me in the queue.’