‘Are you all right?’ I ask eventually.

Marthe takes a deep breath, her eyes are half-open. A gull screeches somewhere, caaaw caaaw caaaw. My jaw is stiff, she looks so stupid, she looks so fucking stupid standing there like that, I can’t even look at her.

Chapter 5

Kristoffer takes some raw meat out of the fridge and chops some herbs for a marinade. Over the past year or so he’s started making sausages from scratch and complicated casseroles that cook for hours at a time and sourdough starters that stink out the fridge, and back at home he has enormous kitchen appliances and a meat grinder and a sous vide machine that dominates the kitchen worktop, Marthe says she’s got no idea what you’re supposed to do with any of his fancy bits of equipment. He brewed his own beer once too, but nobody liked it much.

‘I need some help from one of you,’ he said.

‘Ida can do it,’ Marthe says, stretching her legs. ‘I think I’m going to chill out for a bit.’

There’s something about their tone when they speak to one another, their words sound rehearsed.

‘Is that OK?’ Kristoffer asks, looking at me.

‘Sure,’ I reply.

I don’t need to rest, nobody needs to feel sorry for me, and I like spending time alone with Kristoffer anyway, doing something or other as we chat. I grab a knife and 36slice potatoes into wedges, he admires how quickly I work. The cabin kitchen is small. I used to know where everything was kept, but Kristoffer and Marthe have moved things around, the spices and salt are in the cupboard rather than on the shelf above the hob. They’ve painted the walls here too, they used to be green, now they’re a deep blue, very contemporary, they change all sorts without checking with me first. The windows are the same as ever, the glass panes are old and make the world outside appear warped and wavy, with the odd dead winter fly on the windowsill.

‘How did it go with that guy you were going to meet?’ Kristoffer asks as I tip the wedges into a roasting tin.

‘Who?’ I ask him. ‘Oh, him. That was just a Tinder date; nothing came of it.’

‘You should check out whether there are any hunks in the neighbourhood while you’re here,’ he says.