I raised my eyebrows.

‘Come on, don’t pretend you haven’t been hammered before. And if there was ever an evening when you need it, champ, it’s today. Tonight, I mean. Just don’t tell your mum. She might be as fragile as a leaf these days, but boy, when she’s angry, she’s dangerous.’

He smiled and winked at me. I took a step closer and looked at the bottle.

‘Tequila, Imo?’

‘Mhm?’

He moved quickly around the kitchen, opening the fridge, turning on the oven, pulling out drawers and getting out dishes and plates and pots and pans. ‘Have you got a problem with tequila?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ve never tried it before.’

I didn’t feel like drinking at all. The rage that I’d felt when Børre first posted his comment had drained away, but Mari was back in my thoughts again, and it was starting to really sink in that I would never ever see her again. I found it hard to think of anything but how it felt to hold her, how her head sometimes rested against my chest, how she liked to listen to my heart beating. It was suddenly difficult to breathe.

I tried to eat something, as I worried about how the evening might end if I didn’t. Imo was right, I had had a few beers before, but I certainly wasn’t a seasoned drinker. My friends sometimes teased me about it, saying I was always so serious about my football. Come on, loosen up a bit, they’d say.

When we’d finished eating, Imo poured some tequila into a small schnapps glass. ‘The normal thing would be to drink this with salt and lemon,’ he said. ‘But normal is boring, so I normally don’t bother.’

I looked at him. ‘So … you don’t like boring, which is why you’re doing something boring?’

He looked at me quizzically.

‘You said you normally don’t bother.’

He laughed at me and smiled. ‘I knew you had a decent head on you. Go on, take a small sip, just for starters.’

I did as I was told. Even though I swallowed only a teaspoonful, it burned all the way down my throat. I coughed. My uncle laughed again.

‘One more,’ he said. ‘You’ll get used to it after a while.’

I could not for the life of me understand why people voluntarily drank this. And even claimed to like it.

‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

I sent Imo a pointed look and took another sip. ‘If you love barbed wire,’ I said, having tried once more to swallow it. My head felt like it was on fire.

‘I’ll go put some music on,’ Imo said. ‘Let’s leave all the washing-up. I can do that in the morning. The mice will be happy.’