Her eyes cleared for a second. ‘Ah, so it was.’ Then the veil descended again, she caressed my neck with a finger and pressed her stomach against a soft spot in my soul.

I felt like a tight-rope walker without a balancing pole. Or else the pole was too small. Or the rope was too taut. If the place hadn’t been so crowded I would have missed my footing, my knees would have given way and I would have fallen with my face in her lap, because now we were balancing without a safety net. That was how it felt.

She raised her face to mine again. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Varg.’

‘Varg?’ She came a touch closer as though she still couldn’t see me clearly enough. ‘Varg as in wolf? But it’s a protected species, isn’t it?’119

‘The occasional one … is captured,’ I said.

‘My name’s Bella.’

‘I know.’

‘Though actually it’s Belinda.’

I tilted my head. ‘Bella Linda, Belinda … Isn’t that … tautological?’

‘Belinda Bruflåt … It flows, doesn’t it?’

‘It sounds like the name of a pop singer from Landås, many years ago.’

She laughed, a low chuckle, like a cat sneaking under a fence at night. ‘I am from Landås.’

‘But not many years ago?’

More laughter, brighter, as if the cat was rubbing against a moonbeam. ‘No. Only twenty-four.’

I hesitated. ‘Then you don’t even reach up to … my belly button.’

She smiled ambiguously. ‘Do I need to go any further?’ Then she lowered her face again and into my neck.

I looked over her head. Beside us Cleopatra was still dancing with the man with the ski-jump chin. I could see her profile now: white and etched into the moving background. There was something familiar about her that took me aback. Then her partner swung her around and she was gone.

I couldn’t see Stig Madsen. Slowly I manoeuvred us around so that I was facing the opposite direction. There he was. He had joined Jakob and was standing by the chair in which I had been sitting, glaring at me with an expression like a discordant guitar solo.

I swung around and let them see us from the side. In a way I saw myself side on too, dancing with Belinda Bruflåt, her soft undulating leather against my angular body as my hands slowly slid down her arms to her elbows, on to her slim waist, up to her 120shoulder blades, which felt like the spread wings of small birds, and down again to her waist – and a bit further. My hands rested there, above her bottom, and I carefully pressed her a few millimetres closer. A faint whimper came from somewhere deep inside her and at once her face turned up towards me again. Her eyes were ablaze as she quickly stood on her tiptoes, kissed me softly on the lips and said: ‘I just have to … go out. Will you … wait for me here?’