Yes, by Suzanne, under Barbro’s supervision, she even dictated a few words herself, it has been sent too, not to Lars, but to Felix, they have fished together for years, and if anyone can persuade Lars to come south again, it is Felix, Arne sent it several weeks ago.

“Arne did hva?!”

Barbro turns, flings out both arms and yells above the wet clover and buttercups that she is bloody sick of Ingrid’s whingeing, and her fists swing like oscillating clubs at her sides as she marches up to the house through the knee-high grass.

Ingrid waits until she has disappeared through the porch door, takes a deep breath and heads slowly towards the cliffs in the west, follows the sea-smoothed rocks north past the anchor bolt and nets that are no longer there and reaches the Swedes’ quay house, where the Skarsvåg brothers have hammered an iron hook into a post and are teaching Fredrik how to attach sinker stones to line floats.

Ingrid feels as if she is intruding, Fredrik’s chubby baby-face and the naïve expression that still doesn’t belong here, Helmer and Sverre exercising self-restraint, the three of them each sitting on his own line tub, resting their elbows on their knees and fidgeting with their fingers as if they lack a prayer. Fredrik is standing with a sinker stone in his small hands trying to attach it to the line, he, too, looks up in surprise when she appears.

Ingrid takes Arne behind the quay house, puts two fingers in the breast pocket of his newly washed shirt and tugs, as if to pull him towards her, then pushes him away again and asks if they can stay on Barrøy until after the haymaking.

He looks at her with his one eye and stretches out his arm too, runs his fingertips along her upper arm, it is late in the afternoon and chilly and the dew glistens on their hair and skin, he says he doesn’t know what his brothers want, they haven’t talked about Finnmark for ages, they have started to forget, they are still young.

Ingrid asks him what he wants. She needs a clear answer now.

He withdraws his hand and says he doesn’t know, either.

Yes, he does, she says.

Yes, he says.