There were no more photographs of her. I leafed through the rest of the album, but until 1969 any photos were thin on the ground. Then it was high season again for a few years – marriage and childbirth, christening and birthdays – which all stopped when Beate and I separated in 1973. Later I stopped taking photographs completely. The only ones I had glued in were of Thomas with Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year written on them.

I slept badly that night. I kept waking up with questions I had no answers to, questions I hadn’t asked myself for many years.176

The following day I decided to find out a little more about The Harpers before going to see Jakob with the message from Rebecca.

I popped into the newspaper building in which I felt most at home and asked to speak to Arild Sletten. The receptionist rang to find out if he was free, received an affirmative answer and pointed me in the right direction.

As I passed a half-open door a glance in my direction brought me to a halt, drew me backwards and inside. Laila Mongstad sat watching me with a beaming smile, large glasses and big, curly hair.

‘Hi, Varg.’ She got up, came over to me and gave me a morning hug that hoisted my flag. ‘Long time, no see,’ she said in her attractive north Hordland dialect, pulled a little chair over from the corner and asked if I had time to sit and chat.

‘A few minutes,’ I answered. ‘I’ve got an appointment elsewhere in your establishment.’

She always had a smile on her face. Laila Mongstad had a large, warm heart that made her one of Bergen’s top social-affairs reporters. I had known her off and on from the time I worked in child welfare. She was ten years older than me, but at a certain point in our lives our paths had crossed in a way that had left its mark. It was at a largish party where I, through acquaintances of acquaintances, had been allocated a corner seat at the furthest long table. I had later ensconced myself at the bar, and some time after midnight, more drunk than was good for me, I had found myself face to face with Laila Mongstad, and that beaming smile had drawn me to her like a free parking spot during the morning rush hour. I had groped for her name: ‘You’re S-Si-Sissel … no. Si-Si …’ And she had smiled: ‘No, that’s not my name.’ Mongstad! Bull’s eye, it was Laila Mongstad. And her smile had 177grown even bigger, her eyes had shone like the sun, and she’d had a scent of late-summer honeysuckle. Later we had stood very, very close, a cup of coffee in one hand and a drink in the other, unable to embrace, and we had kissed with great care, and even later we had set down the cup and the drink and our kisses became bolder and freer, and her neck swayed with passion, against the backdrop of the night, before darkness fell, the stars sprinkled dust over the town and we went our separate ways, without going the full distance.