Today, though, Yngve’s mobile phone alarm startled him just before seven. It had been yet another one of those almost-sleepless nights. He had turned over again towards the empty side of the bed, only to see that there weren’t any fresh dents in the linen, no marks on the pillow from the pen she had used while trying to solve a newspaper crossword. He had sniffed, searching for a hint of her perfume, the smell that had been beside him for forty-one years; but all he could register was his own odour, a smell that seemed even older and more useless now that he no longer had anyone to share it with.

All the other women in Åse’s family had grown old. It was the men who found death at an early age – and under the strangest circumstances. A clumsy bicycle accident or a tumble down a ladder when trying to clear leaves from a gutter. A piece of meat that got stuck in a throat during a celebratory dinner. The women could be sick for years, but somehow they seemed to recover.

So why couldn’t Åse do the same?

Another question Yngve had asked The Ceiling.

He got up and went downstairs, and sat at his breakfast table with a buttered slice of bread and a generous helping of Danish liverpaste in front of him. He had coffee and a glass of orange juice as well, but there were no sounds to keep him company other than the ones he made himself: the flipping of a newspaper page, a knife quietly placed on the side of the plate. A quick sniff to get rid of an itch just underneath the tip of his nose. He didn’t want the radio on in case he interrupted her hummings in the bathroom, her steps that might appear in the hallway, the drawers she would open and close whenever she got dressed. Even if she would never do that ever again.

Yngve’s coffee needed some sugar, so he got up and opened the cupboard above the stove. There he stopped and stared at a yellow box of tea he had bought for her two and a half weeks before she died. It was still wrapped in plastic.

Could you put the kettle on, please, Yngve?

Her distant voice made him sob. But before he was sucked into yet another typhoon of grief, the phone rang. He looked at the number and saw that it was being redirected from the 113 service. He would have to take it – he was on call. But first he grabbed the kitchen sink with both hands and steadied himself for a moment. Then he answered, giving his full name and rank.