‘Hello!’ I say, feel myself breathing fast, a wave of sudden and glorious fury rising up in me, my hands and feet warm once again. ‘It was two prawns, come on. I should be allowed the right to exist here, pregnant or not.’ 120

‘It’s not about who’s pregnant or not,’ Mum says.

Stein helps himself to another fistful of prawns, he’s finished his first open sandwich already. Kristoffer stares at me, I stare back and he shakes his head.

‘Do you want any more prawns, Olea?’ he asks, tousling her hair.

‘I don’t want prawns,’ Olea whispers to him, still not looking up. They lie there untouched on her plate, Kristoffer asks if she’d rather have liver pâté on her bread and she nods. She sits with Stein and Mum and me and gazes at the tabletop, none of us are her family, I think to myself, I want to cry when I see the way she hangs her head, she doesn’t belong here.

‘Don’t worry about it, Olea,’ Mum says, placing a hand on her neck. ‘Grown-ups argue sometimes, then they make up again.’

She looks across the table at me.

‘Could you go out and speak to Marthe?’ she asks. ‘Then we can all just try to have a nice time together.’

‘It was two prawns,’ I say. ‘She was the one who lost her rag.’

Marthe is in the hammock, she hasn’t removed her shoes, she pushes off with her legs and it swings back and forth. She rests one hand on her belly. As I approach her, she shuffles into an upright position and rubs her face. She’s been crying.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask, adopting a friendly tone.

‘What’s going on?’ Marthe repeats. ‘You’re picking on me, that’s what.’ 121

‘Doesn’t seem like that’s the only thing bothering you,’ I say.

She inhales with a sob.

‘Things are just hard,’ she says. ‘Between Kristoffer and me.’

I climb into the other end of the hammock, pulling my legs up inside. There isn’t really room for two, but when we bend our legs, we just about fit. The hammock wobbles, we have to hold the sides tight until we find a rhythm, rocking back and forth. It was how we always used to sit. The swaying causes my chest to tighten again. It’s just the same trees, the pines and cherry trees, the same hammock, this garden, there’s something hopeless about the way it never changes, the fact that I’m here, growing older by the day.

‘He’s completely uninterested,’ Marthe says. ‘He just goes around with Olea, he hardly even looks at me.’

‘Oh,’ I say.

‘Things have to get better,’ Marthe says. ‘When the baby comes. I don’t get it, don’t know if he’s depressed or what.’

‘I probably shouldn’t say this,’ I say.

‘Say what?’ Marthe replies.