‘Yes!’ I shouted.

‘OK, I’ll start reading then.’

I realised that I had somehow managed to find my way into the kitchen. I held on to a chair while listening to Ole’s voice, but I couldn’t make out a single word he was saying. I have no idea how long it took before he stopped speaking, and I think maybe my eyes slowly closed towards the end. I came to again when I heard my name.

‘Hm?’

‘Does that sound OK with you?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No problem.’

Pause.

‘Is everything OK, Even?’

‘Everythingsfine.’

Another pause. There was some movement in my stomach. It felt as if something was making its way up towards my throat.

‘Are you drunk, Even?’

‘ME? NO!’

I let go of the chair, put down my phone, knocked over an empty bottle that was standing on the floor, and almost tripped on the rug in the hall. But then I caught sight of the door to the toilet. I managed to grab the door handle, which stopped me from falling flat on my face. I pushed it down and saw the porcelain in front of me and – lucky me – the toilet seat was already up, so I dropped down on all fours.

Somewhere on the way, my mind cleared momentarily and I wondered what Oskar’s dad had really written. But then I thought of Mari’s warm hands again.

A few moments later I heard someone laugh behind me.

‘Amateur,’ Imo was saying.

He helped me to my feet and flushed the toilet for me, making a face.

‘Your mother’s going to kill me,’ he said, as the water sloshed around the toilet bowl.

‘Hah,’ I said, now able to focus for a second or two. ‘Right now I wouldn’t mind doing that myself.’

25

25

Well, this is eight minutes of your life you’re never going to get back, Susanne Tollefsen thought. Eight minutes walking, incline level two, with nothing else to stare at but the wall and the basement window in front of her. She had almost given up, several times. All she could think of while she was moving forward, or not moving at all, depending on how you looked at it, was when it would all be over, when she could once more go up to Knut’s apartment and mix herself a drink. Her tongue tingled just at the thought of it.

Thankfully she was alone. Not many people used this basement gym, the fifty-square-metre room in which she’d never thought she would ever actually find herself. Knut had insisted she got a key to the gym when they started dating a little over a year ago. ‘Exercise helps,’ the dimwit had said. ‘Exercise is good for a lot of things.’