With Lars back on Barrøy the milk boat began to call at the island again, even though they didn’t have any milk. It brought goods and materials, transported barrels full of herring and empty ones back, they were full-sized barrels now and the fishing was good all month. The boat also brought telegrams from Felix, and one day at the end of September three letters for Ingrid.

It was dreadful weather that day, and she, Kaja and the letters were wet before she got home and could seek refuge in the parlour.

Eva Sofie wrote that she had become engaged to one of the drivers at the hospital, maybe Ingrid could remember him, he had taken her to the boat. Eva Sofie was in the family way, as she put it, was due sometime in the spring, as she also termed it, and the driver was busy repairing her house. But she still didn’t trust this peace, she kept thinking about Ingrid, and that gave her no peace of mind . . .

Ingrid tried to manage a smile and hung the letter above the stove to dry.

Eric Falc Johannesen was also thinking about Ingrid, although his letter was little more than reports on the running of the hospital in this new era. But he called her “my child of nature”, twice, and wrote that it was a pity he hadn’t managed to tame her, an insidious and ambiguous choice of words that embarrassed Ingrid even though she was on her own; she re-read the letter, felt the same discomfort, and put it in the stove.

However, for a few moments she stood looking at the enclosed photograph, of Ingrid and Erik Falc on either side of a Rococo chair in a blossoming apple orchard with her eyes fixed on some invisible point somewhere above her brow. It wasn’t difficult to recognise the two people, although neither of them looked like themselves.

She took it into the kitchen and showed it to the others. Suzanne wiped the moisture off it with the back of her hand and studied it, a good-looking man, she said, who was he? Selma said Ingrid looked so young. Hanna thought Ingrid looked frightened and Barbro asked who the lady in the picture was, she didn’t recognise the man, either.

Ingrid also hung the photograph up to dry, thinking that one day she would take Kaja to town and have her photograph taken as well, a portrait of mother and daughter, and maybe send a print to someone, but there was no rush, as her child was becoming more and more beautiful with every day that passed. She asked Hanna what this would cost.

“It’s expensive,” Hanna said.

The third letter was from Arne.

~