‘And everyone had the satisfaction of hearing about his … humiliation?’

He shrugged his shoulders and gesticulated, as if to say that wasn’t his fault. They just happened to be there.

‘And how did he react?’

‘Jakob? His face fell a mile. He looked pissed off for the rest of the evening. But he didn’t stay long. He sneaked out – without saying goodbye – less than half an hour afterwards. Actually I hadn’t seen him since. Until yesterday.’

‘Nor Rebecca?’

‘No, Varg, no,’ he said, as though he were talking to a little child. ‘And which band are you playing in at the moment? The Deadly Intellectual Dwarfs?’

I shook my head. ‘The Friendless Bloodsuckers.’

For a moment we stood eyeballing each other. I felt as if I had entered a room of strangers and then, across the room, I’d caught sight of a familiar face: one of my worst childhood tormentors.

Johnny Solheim shot me a look and said: ‘You’re nothing but 81a hound dog and you ain’t no friend of mine.’ Then he went back to ecstasy.

‘So you know that story, too,’ I shouted after him before he had shut the door. Then, when he didn’t react, I mumbled to myself, ‘The one about Marlon Brando and James Dean and humiliation.’

*

I returned to the town centre. Heavy thunderclouds were building in the west. It was as though the weather gods were wrapping Bergen’s mountains in leaden-grey glass wool so they wouldn’t crumble when the deluges rolled in. People hurried home, their faces drained of energy and their arms laden with Christmas presents.

I went up to my office in Strandkaien. As I passed the café on the first floor the smell of salted ribs of mutton and mashed swedes with pepper wafted out and tickled my nostrils. I valiantly forced myself to carry on.

I opened the door to my waiting room. It was a long time since I had stopped leaving the door unlocked. I didn’t want to give my creditors the chance to sit down while they waited.

I had brought the post up with me. A Post Office brochure advised me to send my Christmas cards early. A reminder from Televerket asked me to pay the telephone bill even more promptly. I made a note on my pad: Don’t forget Christmas cards. In brackets I wrote: 2. Then I lifted the receiver and confirmed they hadn’t cut me off. Not yet.

I checked the answerphone. No messages. It didn’t even have so much as a Christmas carol to offer me.

I went to the window and looked out. The market traders 82were calling it a day, and all the passers-by below were looking up in fear, but not at me. It was the dark and menacing storm clouds they were keeping an eye on.

One sultry, grey June afternoon a quarter of a century ago there had been the same type of sky, then coruscating lightning had slashed open the bellies of the clouds and cascades of rain had washed into the town, pounded on rooftops and swept inside, onto windowsills wherever windows were open in the heat. I had been eighteen years old, the afternoon had been electric with sexuality and I was waiting for people to arrive. My mother had left for the country, there were bottles of beer cooling in the sink and one of the guests was Rebecca…