‘We don’t have to call this an interview,’ Ole said. ‘If you find it uncomfortable.’

His reason for being there brought me back to reality with a bang. I almost began to cry and had to pull myself together.

‘It’s fine,’ I said.

Ole wanted me to begin by talking about Mari. Anything that came to mind. I told him how we’d met at school on a very ordinary Tuesday. She’d come over during morning break and asked if she could interview me for the school paper.

‘Me?’ I said.

‘Yes, you.’

‘Why?’

‘For a few reasons, actually.’

‘A few?’ I always stunned the girls with my cool, witty replies…

‘You play football at a national level…’

I wobbled my head a bit in a yes-no gesture.

‘…you play guitar in a pretty cool band…’

My face said, well, I don’t know about that.

‘…and…’ She looked at me, slightly nervous, as though she wasn’t entirely sure whether to carry on or not; ‘…you’ve lived in Fredheim before. A long time ago.’ She bit her lip. ‘I wondered what it’s like to come back, especially…’ she looked down ‘…coming back to the school where your dad worked.’

The fact that almost everyone at school, teachers included, knew who I was, was as much thanks to Dad as it was me playing football or being in a band. The car accident had left an imprint on the whole town. Everyone knew about it. People still talked about it.

Mari thought it could be a good story, a sort of portrait of the prodigal son. And I – Mr Smooth with the Ladies himself – I just stood there and couldn’t say a word. I’d been interviewed before, so it wasn’t that. It was just something about Mari that … I don’t know … resonated with me somehow from the start.

She had pale skin and a heart-shaped face. Her hair was dark brown and messy, as though she’d just got up and hadn’t bothered to brush it before going out. She wasn’t trying to make me like her, which perhaps was one of the reasons why I did. And she seemed a bit nervous. Like it was the first time she was playing journalist and she didn’t know how to go about it.

We met after school the same day, and that was when she told me her full name for the first time: Mari Elisabeth Lindgren. Like she was half Norwegian, half Swedish and maybe had a sister called Pippi.

I’d thought we would talk for about fifteen minutes or so, half an hour tops, but we ended up walking around the streets for about three hours. The weather was great that day, so warm and sunny, and it didn’t get dark until late. She asked me all kinds of questions about all kinds of things. After a while, I started asking about her life, too.