It was Sunday, and she was expecting her youngest son, who was a student and actually lived at home, but most nights slept at his friends’ houses. He was twenty-seven, and his studies were being drawn out, since his father had died completely unexpectedly and left only the bare minimum to support his widow and nothing at all to his son. So he had to work during the day and study at night. An advance on his inheritance was out of the question. Despite her piousness, his mother hated anything that reminded her that she was going to die one day, and the word ‘inheritance’ filled her with images of ungrateful children, indecent funeral banquets, powerlessness, and darkness. It was good for him to support himself, she thought. Young people shouldn’t have inordinate amounts of free time –

But he still had time for girls, however he managed it.

She carefully whisked a feather duster over her husband’s portrait, around which hung a dried wreath of small blue and yellow flowers with shiny beech leaves jutting out. She paused in front of the picture, and for a moment merged so silently and naturally with her surroundings that she seemed closer to death than when she was asleep. Then reality again took hold of her sinewy, though fragile body; she shivered, seeking respite from the relaxed, almost jolly eyes above the pastor’s ruff collar. ‘Young people don’t grasp the seriousness –’ she said heavily. ‘No humility toward life, no sense of responsibility.’

She was really hoping they could keep their hands off one another until they were married. She would never forget that terrible day when she had found something in the inner reaches of the boy’s wallet, something about the use of which there could not be the least doubt, even if one had been married to a pastor and quietly received the children it was God’s will they should have. She had waited for him tearfully that evening, with the small, sterile, crinkling package between two fingers. ‘Now, Asger, have you sunk so low that you don’t trust your mother anymore?’

Her eyes grew dark with anger at the memory, while the porcelain trinket on the desk got a once-over with the duster. Then she lugged a chair beneath the crystal chandelier, and, panting heavily, lifted her dress to reveal a pair of short, thick, bowed legs in black socks. She stepped up onto the chair from which, with the help of a surprising ability to stretch, she sent a rag twisted around the end of a broomstick in the direction of the faintly chiming pendants, allowing her to shake down a bit of dust onto the crocheted table cover that had been placed over the large, round mahogany table for the occasion.

He was supposed to come at three o’clock with his girlfriend. Now it was almost four.