I am in constant movement, a feeling of restlessness inhabiting my body. I yawn abruptly and involuntarily, my jaw creaking. I fill my lungs. I am so tired, really very tired, have lost count of the number of days without consecutive hours of sleep, and no relief in sight now. I am approaching the English Channel. The vessel traffic is increasing, so lying down and trusting that it will suffice to check the fairway every half hour won’t do here. I must live in the cockpit now.

I have showered. There is still a lot of water in the tank. My hair in the salty sea air smells of shampoo; my body, my skin, dry and smooth, no longer sticky with sweat. The air temperature is twenty-three degrees Celsius, an early-morning heat. I am wearing only shorts and a T-shirt, but my hair, my just-washed hair, is not held in place by grease and salt water, but instead sticks to and irritates my face when the wind loosens it from the ponytail. I should get a haircut, most women my age have short hair. I could take a pair of scissors and be done with it, right now. . . . No, because then perhaps he wouldn’t recognize me. Then perhaps Magnus wouldn’t recognize me.

Recognize me? Signe, why are you thinking in this way? As if it makes any difference. The most important thing is that he recognizes the ice, the ice that I am going to throw back in his face. He will have his betrayal and his weakness thrown right in his face.

I should have realized how different we were from the very beginning.

My life was in Bergen, but Magnus was constantly pulling me toward Ringfjorden and Eidesdalen. He spoke about our villages, about friends who settled down there and had children. He spoke warmly and at length about the unity, the simplicity, and the nature, about its fantastic beauty. He used words like that, like some tourist.

He let me know that he saw my mother from time to time. Whether it was by chance or design, I didn’t know, didn’t want to ask. Later I thought I should have known more about the kind of contact they had, about what it meant to him, but the whole time I told myself that she wasn’t an important part of my life, that I wasn’t interested in what she was up to, and for that reason neither could she be an important part of his.

It was my father I spoke with. I called him at least once a week. I was always the one who made contact with him, from the telephone in the hallway of the block of bedsits.

But one day the landlord knocked on the door and told me that I had received a phone call. This time it was my father who was calling me.

“Signe? Hello?”

“Hello, Daddy.”