I had a quiet aquavit with my rice pudding and coffee. Afterwards I decided to take a trip round Nordnes before going back to see Jakob.

Returning to these streets was always sad. Even though much had changed there was always something still intact. A small cul-de-sac that hadn’t been tarmacked, a house that was still the same colour, a doorstep where I had once sat. A lot was gone, but the footprints of the children who had run around there would never be entirely erased until they themselves were, all of them, from the sketch-pad of time.

In many ways it was like walking through a post-war town, more now than in 1945, in fact. There was a sense of abandonment about this part of Bergen. Shops were closed down, people had moved to other districts, the fronts of buildings had changed beyond recognition and, worst of all, there was no life on the 98fjord. No tugs, no Norwegian America liners, no freighters setting a course for towns, other than Stavanger or Florø, and Bergen’s last sailors had long since checked into the old seafarers’ home up in Haugeveien.

I walked into Nordnes park. It was December there too. All the leaves had fallen from the trees, the branches pointed like dead fingers to the sky, the grass had no life and even the tarmac looked as though it might disintegrate at any moment.

I walked back to town, past the tall, dark windows of Nordnes school, where the children in the first class had drawn suns, cut them out and hung them up for show, as a promise of better times.

It was six o’clock by the time I rang the bell at Jakob’s.

He opened the door. His eyes looked past me as though he had been expecting me to arrive with someone. Then he let me in, almost reluctantly.

‘I’d been expecting to hear from you before,’ he mumbled as he ushered me into the sitting room.

From the record-player came: ‘I’m looking through you … You don’t look different, but you have changed…’

‘I often play Rubber Soul,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of our first happy years.’

I raised my eyebrows by way of a response.

We stood looking at each other. Then he said: ‘Well, was she there?’

I shook my head. ‘I even went to his home. Have you met his new wife – Bente?’

‘No. What was she like?’

‘She reminded me a bit of Anita. Somewhat bruised.’

‘But Rebecca wasn’t…’

‘No. I went to the video shop and asked him straight out.’99

An expression of sudden pain flitted across his face. ‘Couldn’t you have been a little more … discreet?’

‘Discretion is not necessarily a virtue, Jakob. More often than not it’s an unnecessary detour.’

‘OK, OK.’ He looked around helplessly. ‘What would you like to drink, Varg?’

‘Anything. A glass of beer maybe?’

He fetched a bottle and the next Beatles track was ‘In My Life’.

‘They really were happy years,’ I said, motioning to the record-player.