‘Ready for the big day?’ she asks as I haul my bag into the tiny bedroom, the one I always sleep in.

‘Yes and no,’ I reply. ‘Definitely ready for some wine, at least.’

‘Do we have to say anything?’ Marthe asks, sitting on my bed. ‘Give a speech or anything?’

‘Doubt it,’ I say. ‘But I’ve prepared something, just in case.’

‘Super-daughter,’ Marthe says with a smile, the corners of her mouth drooping downwards slightly. ‘I haven’t had the energy to tackle that particular task.’

I take off my shoes, my feet are sweaty. I feel a pang when she calls me super-daughter, it shouldn’t feel that way, she’s just jealous.

‘But I don’t know if I should say anything to her and Stein,’ I tell her. ‘She won’t be expecting it, surely? Should I be talking for both of us?’

‘A toast to Mum and Frankenstein,’ Marthe says, raising her hand as if holding a glass.

‘Stein’s nice, Marthe,’ I reply, laughing.

Marthe chuckles.

‘To Mum and Einstein,’ I say. 19

We’re celebrating Mum’s sixty-fifth birthday tomorrow evening, Marthe and Kristoffer and Olea and me and Mum and Stein, we’re all going to eat prawns and drink wine. Mum said it could double up as a celebration for my fortieth too, I told her that wasn’t necessary, it’s three months too late for it anyway. I didn’t do much to celebrate on the day, just went out with a few friends, we had a three-course dinner and a few glasses of wine and that was that, most of them had to get home to their kids. When Mum turned forty at some point back in the Nineties, she received a card that said, ‘Life begins at forty!’ I remember it to this day, it was decorated with rockets and shooting stars. Mum liked it and found it amusing, she kept coming back to that phrase all year, life begins at forty! she would say, and her friends would raise a glass. I remember them as ladies of a certain age, women with dry lipstick and school-age children, and when they got together, they would call it a girls’ night. When I turned forty, I felt the same as I always had, I had no sense that this would be when life began. On my birthday, a friend told me that I looked good, as if it were some kind of consolation; immediately after she had said how nice it must be to be alone, because it allowed one to really get to know oneself, and I remember thinking to myself that it might be nice to get to know someone else, too.