Susanne didn’t have the strength to fight the both of them. She also knew they were making sense. She’d only had a piece of bread last night with her glasses of red.

They took the elevator down to the first floor, where they found a canteen that offered soup and sandwiches. Susanne ordered a minestrone. Soup would be easy to eat. Even had a ham and cheese sandwich. He looked at it with a frown.

They took a seat at a round table covered with breadcrumbs and spots of old coffee. A small plant sat in the centre. There were some other people in the café area as well. People with grim-looking faces. They were all eating or drinking coffee almost in silence, eyes staring emptily ahead.

The soup was warm and surprisingly tasty. Susanne could feel her body responding to the sustenance it instantly gave her. She drank some water as well while watching Even try to eat his sandwich. It really didn’t look tasty. White bread with a thick layer of butter. Ham more grey than pink.

They had been sitting there for a few minutes, when Susanne finally spoke.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. She reached her hand across him, to touch his face. Laid it against his cheek, exactly where she’d hit him. ‘I just…’ She looked for the right words to explain – to defend what she’d done, only to realise that she couldn’t find them. There was nothing to defend. She’d crossed a line. A big line, and there was no way to go back over it.

‘It was just a bit too much for me at that moment.’ She lowered her gaze. ‘No child should ever be hit by their parents,’ she added. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Even looked at her. It took a while before he said: ‘But I’m still wondering…’ he took another bite of his sandwich ‘…why it’s so hard for you to talk about this, even after so many years?’

Susanne put her spoon down. She took a deep breath before saying, with a heavy sigh: ‘I guess you have a right to know.’

Susanne hadn’t shared this with many people. Her mother knew, God bless her soul. Knut had asked a few times, but she hadn’t really said anything. But people usually shied away from the topic of Jimmy, simply because they knew how traumatic it had been for her. How painful it still was.

She was certain, however, what people in town thought about her, what they said about her behind her back. That she’d never been able to cope with Jimmy’s death. How she’d drowned her sorrows in alcohol like some kind of walking cliché. That she’d simply run away from Fredheim ten years before. She was sure some even thought she was responsible for Jimmy’s death.