Ingvar, on the other hand, had just sat there on the bed like everything was fine and asked her how she was feeling, and if she felt like hitting the town and celebrating their anniversary. And to her own great surprise, she’d felt surprisingly fine after drinking a few glasses of water and taking a shower. After that, they’d had an amazing evening together; she’d even been hungry and dared to tackle a plateau de fruits de mer.

It was only a year or so later when she’d had her appendix removed that she was struck by how similar her sleep in the hospital had been to the one she’d experienced in Berlin. Synthetic and jet-black, as though someone had simply switched her off without her being aware of it. The only difference was that for the surgery, she’d been out for a fraction of the time.

‘Well, well, what’s all this?’ Ingvar exclaimed the moment he stepped into the hallway and noticed the set dinner table, the bowls of raw chicken, pork and beef, aioli, garlic butter and chilli mayonnaise, and in the middle, the pot being kept warm by the blue flames underneath. ‘Fondue. Can’t remember the last time we had that. What are we celebrating?’

‘Nothing at all,’ she said and tried to accompany her reply with a carefree laugh. ‘No need to panic.’ The napkins. It must have been the napkins. Why hadn’t she just brought out the kitchen roll instead?

‘That’s a relief. I was worried there for a second.’ Ingvar hung up his coat and came in. ‘I thought I’d forgotten our anniversary or something.’

‘No, I was just cleaning the kitchen cupboards and I found our old fondue pot and thought, why not?’ She shrugged. ‘Sit down and I’ll get the rest.’

Ingvar sat down and started fiddling with the tiny forks with coloured handles. ‘I’ll take the blue and you can have the red. Sound okay to you?’

‘Absolutely,’ she said on her way back with the jacket potatoes.

‘Wow, this is some stroll down memory lane. Remember when we were in France on that skiing holiday? Wasn’t that the very first time we had fondue?’

‘It was, but I’ve updated the recipe a little – more red wine and less oil – so if it weren’t for the potatoes, it would be proper GI food.’

‘I know it’s only Monday, but this kind of dinner practically requires a glass of wine, don’t you think?’

‘So long as we don’t make it a habit,’ she said with a smile and sat down across from him. ‘It’s a slippery slope.’

Ingvar chuckled and got up. ‘That almost sounds like we should go for a whole bottle instead.’ He winked at her and left the room.

Gertrud pinched her arm to keep herself from being too swept up by the jovial mood.