Then the words came out by themselves, as if they had always been somewhere in the world, waiting for her, as if the entire situation had been constructed and laid out in advance – perhaps as long as she had been alive – and little could be changed about it, as much as wishful thinking could change the weather tomorrow.

She straightened herself in the chair and smoothed out her dress, over her flat belly, which would soon start swelling unmercifully.

‘I mean,’ she said calmly, ‘this is the first time, you understand, and – and – don’t I have to be examined or something?’

He rose with a gracefulness that one would never have thought possible of such a body, and it seemed to Alice that a kind of comic annoyance or impatience was evident in his movements, as he walked past her in the tiny room, where there stood a gurney.

‘If you undress, I will examine you. Go right ahead.’

Her knees were shaking a little as she followed him, very erect and pale. She thought to herself, I will often need to remember the triumph of this moment.

Five minutes later they were sitting across from one another again. He looked at her askance over his glasses. A crooked smile quivered at the edge of his mouth. She put all the contempt she possibly could into her expression, but she couldn’t make his smile go away.

Then he said slowly, with a slight, ironic bow in her direction:

‘You are about three months along – congratulations, Madam.’

Then they both got up, and he reached out his hand. Childishly, she pretended not see it as she opened her purse and took out her wallet. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘Twenty kroner, please.’

He held the door open for her as she left the consultation room.

‘Next!’ he shouted.

Not until she was down on the street, where people brushed into her impatiently on their way home for dinner, did she feel like herself again, her horrified soul reeling for support like a drunkard. Something Bent had once said occurred to her: It’s not our words that reveal our character, it’s the deeds we undertake, regardless of their logic. What did his child look like? The thought had never occurred to her before. A pain she had never felt before was burrowing and burning inside her. The deeds we undertake –

Slowly, with her hands in her pockets and her shiny hair blowing in the wind, she walked home to her lonely rented room.

Evening