Just as she put her bare feet on the cold linoleum floor, Henrik opened the door between their rooms and walked over to his side of their shared dressing closet – a monstrosity that filled an entire wall – where he started rummaging through his clean shirts without giving her as much as a glance. Still, she could tell from his back that he wanted to say something nice.

‘I’m getting up now,’ he said. ‘You can tell Hanne. And get her to turn off that blasted record player.’

Helene felt under the bed for her shoes. Lately she had always felt slovenly or dressed wrong when he was around.

‘Then she’ll start singing,’ she said. ‘I can’t cut her vocal chords.’

‘No. Unfortunately.’

He laughed appreciatively, as if she had made a joke, then walked back to his room with his shirt slung over his striped pyjama shoulder. It occurred to her that they never talked about anything but Hanne, as if she were the only link between them. It seemed crazy.

She put on her old robe and walked down the long hallway to the kitchen.

‘Good morning,’ she said, leaning up against the door jamb. ‘My husband is getting up now, so you can make coffee. And can you please turn off the record player?’

Hanne looked up at her with her narrow green eyes. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and a cup in her hands. A thick, knitted sweater accentuated her generous bosom. Helene had to fight back the impulse to fire her on the spot. She stood there until the girl slowly got up, wearing a shameless smile that radiated the consciousness of the sexual superiority of idiotic youth.

Helene took it as the kind of smile you give to an older, discarded fellow female, and she was infuriated.

On the way to the bathroom Helene stumbled over her daughter’s shoes. She picked one up and examined it carefully, gently stroking the fine, red leather with her hand. It was a small shoe – size 36 – high-heeled and open, with a short, flared upper; a somewhat affected, coquettish shoe, which looked good for nothing except making you wiggle, though Linda could walk in them with no problem. The thought of eighteen-year-old Linda was a haven in Helene’s homeless heart, and as she stood there in the darkened hallway with the little feminine object in her hand, a tenderness for her first-born spread like a balm over her plagued consciousness. Henrik loved and coddled Linda, just as she herself always had. As stepfather, he acted according to plan. He loved the girl, and tried heroically to hide his antipathy toward the boy. The children had been seven and four when they had married. Her first husband had died of tuberculosis. The tragedy of it never really penetrated her, and only through great effort could she recall the circumstances with any detail. To her the past never seemed real.