There was Knut, obviously. Knut was company. He never demanded anything of her. And even if she knew she was never going to love him, Susanne was sure of his love, no matter what, even if she really couldn’t understand why. There wasn’t a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for her. Maybe he just loved the memory of her, she thought. The girl he’d been head-over-heels with ever since junior high. Maybe she was just a nostalgia crush. Or maybe he thought he’d finally won his trophy.

She stopped in front of the punch bag and hit it, once. Not hard, but hard enough for her knuckles to hurt. She hit it again. She thought of Ole Hoff, and hit the bag again. And again. Now she could see parts of her skin starting to turn red.

You shouldn’t have been so angry, she said to herself. Not with Even. It wasn’t his fault that people were talking about him in Fredheim. That reporters wanted to speak to him. The police. She should probably talk to them herself soon. Everyone who’d been in the school theatre last night had been encouraged to talk to them voluntarily. But just the thought of Ole Hoff made her hit the bag again. Soon she was bleeding.

The door to the gym opened. Knut was standing there, as always dressed in his dark-blue cab driver’s uniform. ‘So this is where you’re hiding,’ he said.

‘Hiding?’ she spat back at him. ‘I’m not hiding. I’m … exercising.’

Knut had been asleep on the sofa when she got home from work. She didn’t want to wake him – he’d been working late the previous night. And when he had come to bed it had taken him ages to fall asleep. He’d been tossing and turning for hours.

‘Off to work?’ she asked.

‘Yeah,’ he replied. ‘What are your plans for the evening?’

Susanne could feel the flames in her chest come to life again. She took a quick look at her red knuckles and thought: That, Knut, you really don’t want to know.

26

26

Yngve locked his front door behind him, hung his jacket up to dry – again – and took off his shoes. Then he listened for sounds he knew he wouldn’t hear. Her shoes weren’t in the hall, either, of course. None of her coats were on their hooks. No smell of the perfume she used to wear.

He went into the kitchen and looked at the mess he’d left behind that morning: the newspaper, the plate with a half-eaten piece of bread spread with dark-grey liver paste. The glass of juice with sludgy chunks in it. He cleared it all away and then took a beer from the fridge. Decided to drink it in the living room. He didn’t want the TV on. He just sat there in silence, and drank.