“I’m here to steal your baby.” Santi’s voice: the ultimate proof of the end and beginning that wait for her when this life is over.

Thora breathes in, readjusts her perspective. What matters is who he is in this life: her friend, come to meet her child for the first time. “Come on up,” she says cheerfully, and presses the key to let him in.

He arrives at the door with a bag of shopping.

“Hey, Wolfie.” She accepts the bag one-handed, embracing him with the other as he leans in to kiss her cheek. “You’re an angel,” she says, going through the bag: ready meals, snacks, a cornucopia of hands-free food.

“My mother is the angel. She’s the one who told me what you would actually need right now. Thanks to her, you don’t have ingredients for a risotto.”

“Thank fuck for Maria.” She takes his hand. “Come on. His Majesty is receiving visitors.”

They go softly through to the old spare room she still has trouble thinking of as a nursery. Jules, yawning, sits by the cot, one of her fingers grasped in Oskar’s tiny fist.

“Look at his beautiful brown eyes,” Jules whispers to Santi as he comes in.

Thora elbows him. “We know whose fault those are.”

Santi shrugs. “I told you, you should have gone the anonymous donor route. Asked for the best Viking DNA they had on file.”

“You’re perfect, you know that,” says Jules, and kisses him on the cheek as she stands up. “Anyone for tea?”

They both nod without looking away from the baby. “He looks like Estela,” Santi muses.

“Shh.” Thora looks to the door, but Jules is still in the kitchen.

“It’s true.” He’s doing what he always does: pushing her to admit this is not her only life. It’s a game they play, an old argument flipped upside down through the prism of their knowledge.

Thora reaches into the cot, lets Oskar grab her finger. “Estela’s nose never looked like that,” she argues quietly. There’s a reason Santi usually wins their game: the riddle of their lives is a mystery she can’t resist coming back to.

Santi laughs under his breath. “You just don’t want to think about the last time we did this.”

“There was a last time?” says Jules, coming back in with tea. “You never told me about that.”

Thora shoots Santi a warning look. He smiles, taking the mug from Jules. “Of course we didn’t tell you. Our secret love child is our business.”

“Well, at least tell me when their birthday is,” says Jules, sitting down next to Thora. “I’d like to send a card.”

Thora laughs, half-nerves and half-relief. She draws her wife in for a kiss.

Jules leans across and pokes Santi solemnly in the shoulder. “Hey. You. All that stuff in the kitchen. You shouldn’t have.”