Marthe’s skin goes goose-pimply in the breeze as we undress in our usual spot. Her stomach is pale and distended. Fully clothed, she might be mistaken as having simply put on a little weight, but without anything on it’s clear it’s no ordinary weight gain. I kick off from the rock by the water’s edge, the cold closes in around me, I gasp and splutter, spit out salt water. Marthe still hasn’t come in, she’s standing there with water and seaweed up to her knees, swaying gently with her arms wrapped around herself.

‘You just have to go for it,’ I tell her. 30

‘I’m not as tough as you are,’ Marthe says, sounding a little sarcastic. It’s always the same, every summer, I’m quick to get into the water while Marthe takes her time, and then we each make digs about which approach is best.

Sitting beside one another on the smooth rocks by the water’s edge, our towels wrapped around us and our blood pumping through our bodies as the sun warms us, she pats her stomach and tells me it’s not easy, all this.

‘No, I get that,’ I tell her.

I don’t want to hear it. I want her to be quiet, I wish I hadn’t come, hadn’t heard about it. Now I can’t tell her about Sweden, it all seems so pathetic.

‘No,’ Marthe says. ‘I’ve always thought to myself that, if it happened, I’d be over the moon.’

She squeezes her hair and the water runs down her arms, she shivers. A gull dips up and down on the waves not far from land, gazing at us with those vacant, angry eyes they have, gulls are so ugly.

‘I’m afraid that things will go wrong again,’ she says eventually. ‘I’m hyper-aware of everything, all the time.’

She smiles briefly, feebly, her lips tremble. I should hug her at this point, it looks as if she’s expecting it, expecting me to stroke her and pat her and tell her everything will be fine, just as I always do, but I don’t want to anymore.

‘And we hardly ever have sex,’ she says. ‘At first I couldn’t face it, and now he doesn’t want to.’

‘Oh, I see,’ I reply. 31

She looks at me, my arms are wrapped around my knees; I say nothing. Marthe picks at one of her toenails, pulling at it until something comes loose, then flicks it away, eugh, I say.

‘I can see why he’s lost interest when you insist on doing things like that,’ I say, I want her to laugh but she doesn’t.

‘Plus, Olea is being so difficult lately,’ Marthe says, her tone is impatient now, she can’t conceal her need for sympathy, why can’t I give her what she wants?

‘It can’t be easy for her,’ I say.