Frikk leaned against her leg. Ninni stroked his soft head.

‘You know, if Haldorsen gets the land he’ll build a huge marina down there. With loads of boats and cabins and building work for who knows how long. We don’t want that, do we?’

Frikk just wagged his tail, not in the least worried.

Ninni sighed. It would ruin the island. She loved everything here, every tree and bush, stone and beach. She didn’t want anything to change, at least not for the worse.

They continued on the path. Ninni noticed that the birds were busy and noisy. Frikk noticed too and made it his mission to scare them all out. Ninni kept walking. Her head felt clearer by the second.

After a half-hour walk, they arrived at the foot of the island’s only mountain.

‘It’s not much of a mountain, is it?’ she said to Frikk. But it had the best view and she always climbed to the top.

Frikk had run halfway up before she caught up with him. Twenty minutes of hiking brought them to the top.

A cairn rose above them. Ninni sat down on the ground, facing the sea. She leaned against the base of the cairn and didn’t mind the stones poking at her back. To sit like this was more than enough right now. There would be bad days ahead, but she would be fine in the end. She hoped.

Frikk put his head on her leg and grinned.

‘You never took to Karl, did you? You’re so much smarter than me. I wish I could have sussed him out the way you did. It would have saved me a lot of misery.’ She scratched him behind the ear. ‘Thank God it’s over. I’ll never see him again. Not ever.’

She sipped coffee from the thermos and shared a sandwich with Frikk. Perhaps she would survive this after all.

‘There’s more to life than a broken heart, Frikk,’ she said, feeding him the last piece of salami. ‘It’s hardly the end of the world.’

Frikk snorted and shook his head. Ninni laughed.

A moment later, she jumped to her feet. ‘Let’s take the boat out.’

The dog was happy to do whatever she wanted and followed her down the path that snaked past Agnar’s house. It looked lost, with dark windows. She shivered and hurried by. There was something unsettling about the empty house.

Their boathouse was on one side of the path, Agnar’s boathouse on the other side. It was rundown and the wood was silvery from the rain and the wind. But it was solid. Her grandfather had built it with his own hands. There was a small living space in the loft, as in most of the boathouses on the island.

The boathouse had a pier with a homemade diving board jutting out into the water. In the summer they would jump from the board and climb up the ladder on the side. Her mother hated staying on the island. She was convinced there were eels hiding in the flowing seaweed, waiting to attack her, and refused to swim. At most, she would sit on the beach and let the waves lap over her feet. Mostly she complained about the bad weather and how boring it was.