‘Who was the guy?’ she called out. ‘Your boyfriend?’

She could hear her voice oozing disdain. Norah hated men who treated women badly.

‘No, God forbid,’ Theresa called from the kitchen. ‘Not anymore, anyway. He just hasn’t quite got it yet.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

‘I’m fine. He didn’t do anything. Shouted at me and knocked over a few chairs, but he’s basically harmless.’

‘If you say so.’

Norah went over to the bookcase and crouched down so she could read the spines better. The books seemed to have been sorted by colour. She soon found a whole bunch of her favourite authors: Donna Tartt, Zadie Smith, Meg Wolitzer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Siri Hustvedt, Maya Angelou, Robert Seethaler, Haruki Murakami. She also spotted Shakespeare’s Complete Works, everything by Kafka and all seven Harry Potters. The rest of the shelves were filled with a dozen or so Stephen Kings and on top of the bookcase lay a well-thumbed copy of Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia the Robber’s Daughter. Norah felt a smile spread across her face. Her childhood favourite. She took the thick book in her hands, opened it and leafed through. Something fell out onto the floor and she started and picked it up—a little plastic sachet of weed. She slipped it back between the pages and had just replaced the book on the bookcase when Theresa came in from the kitchen carrying two brimming glasses of red wine.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she said. ‘I had to wash a couple of glasses.’

‘No worries.’

‘Why don’t you sit down.’

Theresa put the wine on the floor in front of the sofa and sat down herself. Norah joined her, taking a sip from her glass. The sofa was so soft that she sank deep into the cushions and so small that the two women had to sit closer than Norah would usually have been comfortable with. For once, though, it didn’t bother her; something about this flat was making her feel relaxed.

‘I still haven’t thanked you for getting rid of Maurice,’ Theresa said.

‘I thought he was called Rico.’

Theresa rolled her eyes.

‘He calls himself that, but actually he’s called Maurice. Ridiculous. I don’t know what I ever saw in that moron. But anyway: thanks.’

‘I didn’t do anything. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.’

‘Yeah, but not everyone would have bothered.’

For the first time, Norah allowed herself to have a good look at Theresa. She was slender, almost fragile-looking, and although she spoke incredibly fast and always gave a hectic, chaotic impression, she moved with great elegance, like someone who has been forced to take ballet lessons at an early age. Her extraordinarily pale skin was covered in freckles although it was the middle of winter—and she drank red wine as if it were water.

‘Norah with an H or without?’ she suddenly asked.

‘With,’ said Norah. ‘And you?’

‘Hm?’

‘Your name. With or without?’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m with an H, too.’