The woman got up, and her face took on a softer expression. The little girl had sat down to play at a toy kitchen in a corner of the room. They could hear the men’s footsteps through the ceiling.

She held the infant in her arms and looked proudly at Grete.

‘Isn’t he adorable?’ she asked while she sat down and put her nipple in the baby’s mouth.

‘He certainly is.’

Grete observed curiously the wrinkled little head which was bald at the back, like all babies. She smiled.

‘I’m looking forward to having mine,’ she said confidentially.

A shadow fell across the mother’s face.

‘We had been married eleven years,’ she said into the air. ‘Then my husband met a young woman at the office –’

She lifted her gaze and looked Grete in the eye.

‘I still don’t understand it,’ she said. ‘That he really is never coming back. And leaving me to take care of everything. He said, “Just sell the house, then you’ll have that money.” And he knows I have no sense for things like this. You don’t even know the person you’re married to.’

Grete bowed her head as if from an invisible blow.

‘No,’ she said quietly, and she felt anguish in her heart. She longed to go home.

The men came down the stairs. In the entry they engaged in animated whispering. Then they appeared in the doorway. The real estate agent was puffing heavily on his cigar.

‘Isn’t it true,’ he said, looking at the mother, ‘that you are willing to go down to twenty thousand?’

‘In cold, hard cash,’ he added, when she didn’t answer. ‘And the apartment is a good one – two rooms and a den. Cheap.’

It was an exchange.

The husband leaned against the door jamb and sized up the room’s dimensions.