Again she faced us, but by now the groove had deserted her. She stood with her face half-lowered, like Jeanne d’Arc in front of the tribunal: a semi-naked woman in her thirties, wearing a white lace bra and black, silk knickers with a traditional rosette at the front. She had a slim, strangely girlish, body with small breasts and narrow hips.

Jakob asked a question and she nodded.

While continuing to play with his left hand he half-stood up and passed her his glass. She drained it in one, grimaced, put down the glass elegantly, straightened up and began – as she found the melody again – to dance, a kind of jazz ballet in slow 58motion on top of the piano, two steps forward, one to the side. Two steps back and one to the side. At the same time she reached behind, fiddled with the bra strap, pouted like a lady of the night, ripped off the bra to reveal her breasts bobbing in front of our eyes, spun round, slipped down her knickers, spun back – and again – and again, her pubic hair a dark stripe down the middle, then she quickly crouched down, pulled up her knickers, gathered her clothes from in front of her, leaped down from the piano and ran out to a last frenetic flourish from Jakob, a concerned clap from Kari, and the minimum of applause from me.

Jakob stood up and ran after her while Kari and I fell back onto the sofa, clutching our drinks and staring silently into space. My skin was tingling with a strange kind of embarrassment and the glass felt liberatingly cold.

Two minutes later Jakob peeked through the doorway with a sly glint in his eyes. ‘Errmmm. We … are carrying on in here.’ He extended a hand. ‘The sofa’s all yours.’

‘I don’t know…’ Kari said.

But he had already gone.

‘Nor me,’ I said.

I got up, went over and picked a random record from the pile. It was a Leonard Cohen LP, Death of a Ladies’ Man. It might have seemed more than random. Soon Cohen’s hoarse voice was rasping through the room and Kari sank back into the sofa beside me.

After a while she leaned over and rested her head on my shoulder.

I wrapped my arm around her. ‘You have a daughter, you said.’

She nodded. ‘Mhm. Turid. She’s fifteen.’

‘But you’re not … Are you divorced?’59

She shook her head. ‘I’m a widow. My husband died from a brain tumour eight years ago.’

I nodded empathetically. Death reaps and other men follow in the ploughed furrows. After the first frosts are past.

And Cohen sang.

After a while she looked up at me with a strange expression in her bright eyes. She studied my face for a moment. Then she whispered: ‘If you want, we can…’

I wanted and we could.

She had pendulous breasts, supple hips, a golden tuft between her legs, dry skin on her back and a passionate way of making love that allowed us to forget the chaos around us, all the books and the sheet music, our clothes that had fallen on the open newspapers, our shoes wedged between piles of books and journals and the not exactly comfortable baroque sofa, on which you probably needed to wear crinoline to be able to make love without getting blisters.