‘Are they?’

‘Oh, yes. Some people think you may be a burglar and will murder us in our beds. Not me,’ he added.

Jack smiled. ‘You can ease everyone’s curiosity. I’m staying at the Bergets farm.’

For a second Jens stared at him. ‘Oh,’ he finally said. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. So you can tell people that I’m harmless and don’t sleep in a ditch.’ Jack was enjoying himself.

Jens shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so very surprised. We thought the lawyers who run the place now, such as it is, couldn’t rent it out. They are doing a poor job looking after the farm, by the way. Mostly we have taken care of the necessary things.’

‘Like what?’ Jack put the groceries on the counter.

Jens shrugged. ‘We’ve kept up with the grass.’

He looked at him as if he expected Jack to know what he was talking about.

‘Sorry?’

‘The winter grass. It needs cutting at least twice every season and now, because of all this fine weather, it has been growing a lot faster than normal, so we have cut it a bit earlier than usual. You won’t have to cut it again now until July, I should think. And if you’re really lucky, and the weather stays nice, you can cut it again in September.’

‘Okay,’ Jack said, wondering what the man was talking about.

He watched as Jens put the groceries through the ceremony of the till, and followed the instructions on the pad with a little help from the shopkeeper.

‘Pin kode is the same as a pin code, you know,’ Jens explained.

It looked like a spelling mistake to Jack. He stuffed everything in an old backpack he had found in the house and walked towards the door. In the doorway he turned.

‘Why do I have to cut the grass?’ he said.

‘Because of the animals, of course,’ Jens said, beaming at him.

‘It’s something we all do. You’ll save a fortune on it in the winter.’

‘Do you have animals to feed?’ Jack asked.

‘Not us. Alma and I have a cat, but he doesn’t eat grass, of course. But we all help. You will find that in rough times we tend to stick together and when someone needs help we do a dugnad.’

Must be some sort of Norwegian custom, Jack thought when he headed back. Jens seemed to think he knew what it meant. No matter. He was leaving soon.

Chapter 5

Ninni decided to stay around the house. There was work to be done and she had a deep respect for deadlines. It had nothing to do with the Englishman at all.

There was no need to go anywhere. The freezer was filled to the brim and she had everything else she needed from Alma. All she needed first was a morning swim.

She felt better every morning. Because of her parents, she couldn’t throw the phone in the bin, but she could leave it in the house and ignore it. She knew she should delete the pictures. Not only every one she had of Karl and her, taken when she’d thought life couldn’t be better, but also that last one: the one that changed everything. But she wasn’t ready to look at it again and she couldn’t get herself to delete it.