Olea and i sit inside the playhouse, the one Marthe and I used to fight over when we were young, chasing each other out of it and crying to Mum that the other was being unfair. It has also been painted white, it used to be red and inside there are two small benches and an old foam-rubber mattress in the centre, a box of sparkly dressing-up clothes and a few books and games lying around. Drawings have been pinned to the walls. I used to have a box of things I’d found in here, empty snail shells that smelled of salt and old seaweed, pretty stones that felt smooth and round against a cheek, Marthe and I would take it in turns using them to stroke the other’s cheeks, plus a picture of Princess Diana that I’d cut out of some magazine or other, a few nice napkins, I think I can remember the pattern on one of them, purple and pink, glossy and soft. Marthe had found the box a few years earlier, I’d texted her permission to chuck it out.

‘You can sleep in here, you know,’ I said. ‘I did once.’

‘Did you?’ Olea asks. ‘Why?’

‘I used to come here when I was younger, too,’ I tell her, sitting on one of the benches as Olea plonks her bum down 42on the mattress and starts brushing the rainbow-coloured hair of an old pink My Little Pony toy, there are several lying beside it. I remember what the pony smelled like when I first got it, fresh, supple plastic, its rainbow-coloured mane smooth and shiny. Now its nylon hair is thin, the plastic is peeling and discoloured, all of the ponies should really have been thrown out by now, the plastic is probably toxic. One of them is missing a leg, it looks as if it’s been gnawed at by a mouse.

‘The cabin belongs to Marthe and me, you know,’ I tell her.

‘Does it?’ Olea says, carrying on with her brushing.

What did she think, that I was just some sort of guest? I sit and look at her, her pink jumper, her fair hair. She has dark, even eyebrows, she doesn’t look like any of us, not even like Kristoffer, he says she takes after her mother.

‘You’re going to be pretty when you grow up,’ I say.

She casts the briefest of glances up at me before looking back down at the pony.

‘How old are you?’ I ask.

‘Six,’ Olea says.

‘Are you looking forward to starting school?’ I ask her.

‘Yes,’ Olea says. ‘How old are you?’ she asks after a pause.

‘Forty,’ I say.

‘Woah,’ she says. ‘That’s a lot.’

‘Are you excited about becoming a big sister?’ I ask.

She looks at me with hard eyes and says nothing, just keeps brushing.

‘It’s OK not to be,’ I say. 43