Now Ingrid has wheedled out of Suzanne how things stand with her two husbands: the first was a Norwegian Nazi and the second – Armin – was a German non-commissioned officer who was shot by his own for stealing ration coupons and food for her and Fredrik, among others, from a depot he was in charge of, she wasn’t married to either of them.

Ingrid asks if this is the whole truth.

Suzanne yawns and looks as if this is true enough for a lawless outpost like this.

Ingrid asks why she didn’t say anything about Fredrik in her letters. Suzanne says she didn’t think it was worth mentioning, his father didn’t want anything to do with him. So Ingrid leaves it at that. No, she does ask one question, what name did Suzanne go under during these years, Tommesen or Barrøy.

“Tommesen,” Suzanne says.

Ingrid says perhaps she should stop using this name and begin to use Barrøy, at any rate that is the name she used when she registered Fredrik at the school.

“The school, yes . . .”

Suzanne nods slowly.

Ingrid also says she should stay with Fredrik in Havstein for the first week of school, she can stay with Nelly, whom she may remember, Ingrid has already arranged this as well.

“Th’ girl wi’ a stammer?”

“Yes, she stammers.”

But it wasn’t this that was foremost in Suzanne’s mind, this was just a passing thought, what she really wanted to know was why she had to be with Fredrik in Havstein.

Ingrid doesn’t feel any inclination to answer that, because even though Fredrik has been almost half a man in the fields and stopped throwing tools into the sea ages ago, he is as he is.

So mother and son leave in the rowing boat one crystal-clear morning, the sun and an invisible haze making their eyes flicker and squint, they arrive only two weeks late, this too is an old Barrøyer tradition.

~

And it is while Suzanne and Fredrik are in Havstein that Ingrid is brought to her knees, the time has come, there has been no lack of counting and calculating the days, and it is on the early side, all depending on how you view it. She has no wish to let the others witness it either, so she carefully puts down her half-full berry bucket on the grass and staggers down to the boat shed and slides out the færing using the winch, scrambles on board and grasps the oars and tries to row, but gets no further than ten to twelve fathoms out before she falls to the boards in the prow, with her screams summoning the others.