I never visited Dad in his new house. I was proud of that fact as a teenager, I would announce to Grandma or Mum’s friends that I’d never been and that I had no interest in going. I used dramatic turns of phrase, I’ll never forgive him for what he did to us, and Mum acted as if it worried her, she called it Ida’s teenage rebellion. Whenever Dad would call, I’d give brief, one-syllable answers to his awkward questions. After a while he began calling less often, and we only saw each other infrequently, meeting for the occasional coffee when he was in town. Even though I grew older, I still felt like a bad-tempered, uncooperative teenager, while Marthe hugged him so naturally, in a way that I could see made him so happy, she continued her trips to Tromsø, and I felt a kind of quiet disappointment about it all, perhaps I’d have been able to do the same, except it would only have been weird if I’d started doing it all of a sudden. But then he got cancer, we hadn’t spoken for many months at that point. It was pancreatic cancer. Marthe went up north to see him, and when she came back home, she told me I had to go too, that I’d regret it if I didn’t. I didn’t think it could be all that bad, things would improve, I had to think about it for a while before going, I wasn’t ready. While I was busy thinking, his wife rang to tell Marthe that he had died.

———

109At the top of Heia, we look out at the view and point out houses across the fjord that we think we recognise. There are a few people up here. A mother just a little older than me in workout leggings and a crop top is trying to squeeze herself, her three children and her dog into a picture, with a view of the fjord behind them. The two eldest stand behind her, smiling and holding up peace signs as she kneels with her phone in front of her in one hand. They all look at the pictures afterwards.

‘You didn’t get Malin in,’ the boy says.

‘Do you want me to take one for you?’ I ask.

‘Oh, that’d be great,’ the mother says, passing me her phone.

I hold the phone up and look at them on screen, the sun behind them, their faces are going to be dark. Mum steps back out of the way and smiles.

‘You too, Malin,’ the mother says, reaching out for her youngest daughter. ‘All together now.’

‘But it’s windy,’ the youngest girl says. ‘My hair is blowing everywhere, it’s going to look so bad.’

‘Everybody’s hair is blowing everywhere,’ the mother says. ‘It’s not that big a deal.’

‘I don’t want to,’ the girl shouts, breaking free.