At night, when Ma came home from the darkness of the motorway, the first thing she did was check the phone. That it was plugged in. That the receiver rested properly in place.

The fog kept to the fields. Then, one morning, it reached the town. It lay thick and powerful across the whole of Zealand. They said so on the radio. ‘Fog across most of the country.’

I stood at the kitchen window. 18

The light from the street lamps was muffled in grey granules, the cars and side streets vanishing. From the study came the hum of the Tarantula’s computer. Ma had left early. The apartment floated unmoored in the grey.

I made coffee. Carried the cup from room to room. Opened a door and stood a moment. Touched something. I filled the sofa with my legs and emptied it again. Transferred the cup to the island of light beneath the lamp on the piano. Slid my fingertips towards the key where the ivory was missing, so the whole row looked like a gap-toothed grin.

The scent of tobacco and the mysterious, faintly dusty trophies around the Tarantula. The pleasure he took in thingummijigs.

‘The Tarantula, why do you have to call him that?’ Bára asked me once, picking an invisible spider out of her red curls.

‘Is he even your real dad?’

I liked tarantulas. The way they were composed, nearly all hairy arms and legs, which stubbornly refused to go with the rest of them. Their awkward physique, almost like a dancer’s, had always reminded me of my father’s long, slouching walk.

‘Ugh,’ said Bára. ‘Spiders don’t walk, they crawl. Like up your trouser leg, and into your earholes and your pillowcases!’ Her soft cheeks and pointed chin were pink with indignation. 19

I didn’t have the heart to say I was half tarantula myself. You could see it in my arms, that they were too long. In the hair that grew thick and black on my fingers. Instead I said the Tarantula was my tarantula, a nice tarantula, if that helped? I said in certain countries spiders were considered wise and sacred creatures.

Bára shrugged then let her shoulders drop. It was up to me. He was my tarantula-dad, after all.

Now his legs were folded underneath the desk.

He lit a cigarette and put it in the ashtray beside the keyboard. The smoke rose, folded like Chantilly cream. He said nothing, I said nothing. Then I went out. Sat down at the kitchen table. The radio was off, the silence murmuring instead.

When the call came through I didn’t move. The phone was picked up in the study.

‘Marita is dead,’ said the Tarantula.

He stood with my winter coat over his arm, already dressed for outdoors.

‘Come on. We’re off.’

I interlaced my fingers round the coffee cup. Glanced down.