Before I had a chance to protest, he was already on his way outside. I followed him to the school fence, where he produced a cigarette and offered me one as well.

‘No thanks, I don’t smoke.’

‘Good choice,’ he said. ‘These things will kill you.’

He smiled. I smiled back. He lit his cigarette and inhaled deeply.

‘God, you look a lot like your father when you smile. I bet you’ve heard that all your life, right?’

I hadn’t, but I just said yes. Hulsker took another drag of his cigarette then slowly let the smoke out.

‘Your father was a very good man. We went to teacher-training college together,’ Hulsker said. He shook his head, as though memories were popping into it, one by one. ‘Man, those were the days.’

I waited for him to continue.

‘Jimmy was an excellent teacher. Highly respected. He was a magnet for the ladies, too.’ He smiled and shook his head again. ‘But all that changed when he met your mother.’

I tried to imagine the man I had seen on the photographs at home, chatting to the girls, flirting, making witty comments. I couldn’t – he just wasn’t alive to me.

‘How is your mother, by the way?’

I could have said all sorts about Mum, but now was not the time. ‘Fine,’ was all I said.

‘I heard you’d moved back,’ Hulsker said. ‘I’ve thought about giving her a ring, but … I just haven’t got round to it.’

The usual excuse. You didn’t have the time, or you didn’t take the time to do what you should. It was like Mum said: some friends were only there for a certain part of your life.

‘Did you have a lot to do with him around the time he died?’ I asked.

Hulsker didn’t answer straightaway. ‘No, not as much. We’d both got families by then, and that takes up most of your time. But there was the occasional get-together, of course.’

He took another drag of the cigarette.

‘If you’d been Mari, and you wanted to find out as much as you could about my father … who would you go see, besides my mother?’

‘She didn’t talk to your mother?’

‘Not that I know of.’

Hulsker seemed to gaze at something in the distance for a moment, before turning to me again. ‘If I were Mari, I would have talked to my own mother about it.’

‘You mean she should have spoken to Cecilie?’

‘Yes. Jimmy and Cecilie were good friends back in the day. Colleagues, too.’

I thought about that for a second.

‘OK. Thanks. I have to run.’

‘Good luck finding your brother!’

57

NOW

I search for my mother’s face again, trying to make eye contact. Her chin has sunk to her chest. She gives me an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

‘What did you do after that?’ Ms Håkonsen asks.