She stoked both wood stoves and stood in her dripping coat staring at a headless army on the rack, flapping in the soundless wind, one with one leg, one with one arm, a torso, two gaily fluttering cloaks, one without an arm . . . when it occurred to her that she had actually bothered with them because they were personal effects, no matter how torn and worthless they might be, and the wood shavings?

Ingrid went down into the Swedes’ quay house and found the telescope, a heavy, extendable cylinder of something that resembled black moulded leather, with brass rings and two small focus wheels, she vaguely remembered that her father never used it because it distorted his vision, and now she decided she didn’t need it anyway, she knew what she had seen.

She put down the telescope as if it were burning her fingers, fixed the two dry nets hanging on the pegs until her fingers were cold, then dragged them through the snow, tied the anchor rope to the eye of the first net and watched the cork floats bobble out into the waves, attached the smooth slate sinkers, careful not to crack them against the rocks, tied on the next net and pulled, two nets, the usual fifteen fathoms from land, then her eyes rose from the line and the sea to Moltholmen and she saw the first body.

The line slipped from her hands, she plunged into the sea and grabbed hold of it, waded ashore and fastened it, placed the palms of her hands on her knees and straightened her back, stared across the sound and still saw what she saw, what she had seen the previous day, yet she had slept like Nelly nonetheless.

She smacked her mittens together and saw the man lying half way up on the rock with his legs dangling in the sea as though someone had moored him to the anchor peg.

But the sea was falling and he would soon be on dry land, until the next high tide lifted him loose again and carried him away, and flocks of screaming harpies would dive down and tear at this brown figure.

Ingrid walked north to the boat shed and reflected that she had been to the barn loft twice, once to check the sacks of down and once to fetch some wool; there, too, she had seen something without understanding what it was, and she had left the house countless times, but had not been round at the back where the fruit bushes were, they never went there in the winter, who would ever think of walking around their own house . . . ?