‘Ignore him,’ Derry said as he hoisted my suitcase into the boot of their car, a flashy Mercedes SUV with heated leather seats that smelled overwhelmingly of pine. ‘When I’m back I’ll take you sightseeing. I’m sure Gaia and Coco will relish the chance to get out of the house.’

I strained to take in my surroundings from the back seat. It looked like England, with the addition of snow-capped mountains and a smooth, navy-blue lake in the distance. Everything was very blue and very spiky. So in other words, nothing like England.

‘Not a lake,’ Clive said when I pointed at it. ‘That’s a fjord. Grytafjorden, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘What’s the difference between a fjord and a lake?’

He gave me a look in the rear-view mirror as if I’d just asked where babies come from. ‘The fjords were made by glaciers over a number of ice ages and then filled with sea water. They always connect with the sea.’

Derry told me more about the region, and about Norway more broadly: how it was world-leading in its environmental ethics, that it was the first country to introduce paid paternity leave, and that it once knighted a penguin.

‘It sounds like an amazing place,’ I observed.

‘Bloody expensive,’ Clive countered. ‘Especially if you decide to build a house out here. My advice on that is – don’t.’

‘Noted,’ I said, and he laughed.

I guessed that Clive was in his mid-to-late forties, a little older than Derry. He wore a gold signet ring on his pinky, and a navy suit. Orange hair greying at the sides, pale skin, expressive blue eyes, thickly set. He had that same air about him that Tom and most of the people in first class on the plane had – confidence. I wondered how he got that confidence, and how I could get it. Maybe it was just the posh accent. I opened my mouth to ask where he was from, but before I could he said: ‘So you’re a nanny? Been doing that a long time, have you?’

I nodded, stiffly. ‘For … a while, yes.’

‘My niece is nannying over in Spain at the moment. Or “au pairing” –’ he said, making exaggerated air quotation marks with his fingers. ‘– which means she gets paid nothing to run around after three kids under the age of five all day. A so-called “cultural experience”.’ More air quotations. He threw me a isn’t-that-ridiculous smile. I tried to match it and failed epically.

‘Still, you’ve got a great guy as an employer,’ he said. ‘Tom’s great. Really, he is. And you’ll have met the girls? Little Gaia and Coco.’

‘Yes. They’re really special …’

He nodded. ‘Yes. It’s such a shame …’ he said, throwing a strange look at Derry.

‘Such a shame,’ she agreed.