On the bright side, the road trip from Bergen had lifted his spirits, as had the trip on the car ferry. The countryside was not like any countryside he had seen, all mountains and ragged coastline. When he’d arrived in Haugesund he was promptly told by the hotel that there were no cars on that island. No cars? It was ridiculous.

Jack hoped it was a bad dream, but the music continued after he opened his eyes. Sound hallucinations were a symptom of brain cancer, weren’t they? He pulled a hand slowly through his hair. It wasn’t a hallucination from a really bad hangover either.

Reluctantly, he got out of bed and walked over to the window. He pulled the curtains aside and peered outside, not quite sure what he was looking at.

‘This is weird,’ he said.

The hotel window had a view over a small square and two streets. Further down he spotted a bridge. When he had arrived the night before, he hadn’t really got much of an impression. It was just empty streets with lots of white houses.

Now the streets were filled with people. It looked as if there was a huge fancy dress party for the entire town. ‘Weird,’ he said again.

Lots of women dressed in long skirts with embroidery everywhere, others in summer dresses and colourful summer coats. Most of the men he saw wore suits and ties, but some of them had costumes as well, reminding him of Morris dancers.

There were Norwegian flags absolutely everywhere. Along the street stood flagpoles, outside every shop smaller flags decorated the shop fronts, and there were flags on the front and back of taxis and buses passing by on the upper street. There were small flags on people’s bicycles and babies’ prams, even flags fluttering from dogs’ collars. Children and teenagers had flags painted on their cheeks or forehead, some on their whole face.

And so much noise. There were the marching bands he couldn’t see, only hear. Then there were whistles and horns blaring, and yelling from hordes of children running around with plastic trumpets in their hands.

Jack rubbed his head and stretched. One thing he knew for sure, it had nothing to do with him. All he had to do was find the boat to the island and get on board. The sooner he got a good look at the property, the sooner he could sell the place and head back home to London, to his proper life. With money in the bank, he hoped.

After a quick shower, he packed the suitcase and took the lift to the reception. Someone had put a flag on the wall inside the lift.

The receptionist wore a long, pleated dark blue skirt, a white puffy shirt, a red vest with sequins on and, for some reason, a pin made of red, white and blue ribbons. She was blonde and good-looking, almost as tall as him. And she looked at his outfit with a slight frown, before putting on a professional smile.