Occasionally I chat to my colleagues over lunch about my younger sister stressing out about becoming pregnant, I tell them that I don’t know how she does it, there must be other things to spend your days thinking about, instead of just endlessly trying to make it happen.

When we pull up outside the cabin, I sit up in my seat.

‘Have you two been painting?’ I ask.

‘Yep,’ Kristoffer says. ‘Well, mostly me, to be honest. It looks nice, right?’

‘It does,’ I reply. ‘Really nice.’

They’ve painted the cabin white. It’s always been yellow, the yellow cabin, it’s what I’ve always told people, we’re the ones with the yellow cabin. Now it looks like every other cabin around here, ordinary. 17

Kristoffer takes my bag. I tell him I can carry it myself, I’m not like Marthe, who wants Kristoffer to help her with every little thing, but Kristoffer says it’s fine and takes it anyway. Olea runs ahead of us, over the gravel and up the garden path, stone slabs flanking the hedge. She runs everywhere, as if some great amusement always awaits her somewhere up ahead. When I was younger, the hedge was a thick, dense cedar, but Mum replaced it with mock orange a few years ago, she’d wanted something a bit more delicate.

Marthe walks out onto the steps, she looks tired and rubs her face. I smirk.

‘Have you been to collect Aunt Ida, eh?’ she asks, ruffling Olea’s hair. Olea steps back, wriggling free from Marthe’s grasp and running away. Marthe knows that I don’t like to be called Aunt Ida, but she says it anyway. I picture the illustrations from Elsa Beskow’s children’s stories, the Swedish classics about Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender, imagine something shrivelled up, creaky.

We hug.

‘Hi,’ Marthe says.

‘Hey, old friend,’ I say. ‘It’s good to see you.’

Marthe smells nice, familiar, it’s almost as if it is my own scent I’m smelling. Her hair is lighter in colour, it doesn’t look completely natural, and it’s been cut in a style I remember being fashionable a few years ago.

‘This is nice,’ I say, lifting it up as I run my fingers through it.

‘Do you think so?’ Marthe asks. ‘I think the colour is a bit too light.’ 18

‘Not at all, you look pretty,’ I tell her.

People think I’m prettier than Marthe, they always have, and Marthe has a complex about her nose and her boobs, so she perks up when I tell her she’s pretty. She’s easy to please, you just have to drop in a few compliments.

Kristoffer follows Olea around behind the cabin, Marthe and I go inside. The door creaks slightly, it has the same familiar scent, summers long past, old woodwork.