Kristoffer doesn’t want to go to bed yet, Kristoffer wants to have some more wine with me. We find blankets and jumpers; we’re not going inside. We each sit in our own deckchair and I become drunker and my laughter comes increasingly easily. We laugh at things we remember from television series broadcast years ago, things Stein and Mum always say, we imitate them, and Kristoffer laughs and laughs at my cruel impersonations of Stein, he laughs until he has tears in his eyes, I’m hilarious, I go all out. Kristoffer is funny too, he tells me about the time Marthe went ballistic about something or other when they were painting the cabin, and he emulates her tone in a way that’s bordering on unkind, but no more so than when she imitated me yesterday. The box of wine grows lighter and lighter and we have to tip it up to keep it flowing, neither of us can remember how much had been in it to begin with, but it hardly matters, the night is still young, we say, the next morning is hours and hours away, we’ll cope, now that we’ve got started we have no choice but to carry on. I have a sort of tingling feeling in my gut, contentment, it’s good to drink, something inside me is soothed by it, it wants this and this alone, it’s so long 93since I last wanted to be exactly where I am. We don’t talk about them buying me out, I don’t want to think about the fact that Marthe asked me about it, about the fact they’ve talked about it, that Mum has talked to them about it. The fjord is dark, we see the lanterns on the boats passing each other out on the water, the lighthouse blinks in the distance.

‘You’re amazing with Olea,’ Kristoffer says. ‘I have to say it, Ida. Fucking hell, you’re good.’

He pats my knee, missing the mark the first time. He’s drunker than I am.

‘It’s my pleasure,’ I say.

‘Well, sure,’ he says, stretching his legs, ‘jeez, my shoulders are stiff,’ he says. ‘It’s not a given, you know.’

‘Am I right in thinking that things aren’t too easy between Olea and Marthe these days?’ I say.

‘There are a lot of things that aren’t too easy these days, to be honest with you,’ he says.

‘How do you mean?’ I ask him.

He falls quiet for a moment, then sniffs and takes a long drink from his glass.

‘I shouldn’t be talking to you of all people about this,’ he says.

‘I won’t say anything to anyone,’ I say.