Ingrid got up again and went down to the sitting room, where she took out the letters from the chest of drawers her father had once bought in a fit of madness, Suzanne’s well-formed handwriting from the capital, where she had first served as a maid with a wealthy family, then worked as a telephone operator on a switchboard of considerable size and with an impressive name. Ingrid read slowly, swaying to the rhythm of the words, nodding, then she shook her head and put the letters down, visualising Suzanne the day she left the island in the finest clothes they had managed to muster, excited, joyous and as fragile as glass, she had not only taken her precious self but also all the island’s savings, it had not been a pretty sight.

Ingrid blew out the lamp, went into the loft and slept like Nelly, after briefly turning her mind to Barbro again, and deciding that she would redeem the clock she had pawned at Margot’s, the pendulum clock with roman numerals and ornamental hands, even an islander needs a silent dividing line between the two days that pass before a clock has to be wound up.

4

When Ingrid had been on Barrøy so long that even the thought of a clock had gone, a seal got entangled in the net furthest away.

She pulled the seal ashore and saw that it was dead. It was small, maybe a pup. She left it there for the eagles. But it had damaged large sections of the tackle, so she dragged the nets homewards to repair them, then she spotted another seal, which was lying in the snow, barely moving its flippers. She went closer. It looked at her through one black and one white eye. They’d had seals on the island before, but they were shy and took to the water when people approached. This one seemed limp and sickly and was no bigger than the dead seal.

Ingrid put down the nets, dug out a rock with her hands and killed it. Two eagles took off from Moltholmen and swooped down on her. She thrust an arm into the air, they recoiled, thrashing their massive wings, before landing back on the islet, where they sat cackling, eyeing her. One of them had an almost white head, the other was browner and slightly smaller.

Ingrid considered whether to skin the seal, but didn’t know how to, and her father had said you had to be careful with seal meat, there might be trichina in it.