Ingrid said she didn’t want to eat others out of house and home.

Jenny came with the kitten in a basket, over which she had placed a piece of herring netting so that it could stick a paw through the mesh. Ingrid held it in her fingers and asked what its name was.

“Hva tha likes,” Jenny said, before she too started studying her face, wouldn’t Ingrid like to stay there for a few days?

Ingrid smiled, said no, thank you, and left, hurried back to the store, as if there was hope yet, someone she could tell, in any event she needed to buy some items, and that was as far as she got, then she remembered she also wanted to redeem the clock, would Margot take ration coupons instead of money, for the time being?

Margot asked what in heaven’s name she should do with ration coupons.

“But just teik it. It’s not worken’.”

She went into the storeroom and fetched the pendulum clock, wrapped it in sacking and rolled the weights in a towel, put everything in the box of provisions and Ingrid walked out with a double-edged relief – it was like nausea – and down the road and clambered aboard the færing; she placed the basket with the cat inside on the stern thwart, as on a throne, between two net sinkers so that she could keep an eye on it during the journey.

The wind was still coming from the south-west, she had to row, initially at an angle to the waves, then head-on, the swell had never been greater and the day never shorter. She rowed too fast, became agitated and sweaty, rowed even faster and the sea splashed into the boat. In the lee of Oterholmen she had to bale water and drifted north. She rowed too fast again – the cat yowled beneath the spray from the sea – and rammed the landing stage on Barrøy only after navigating through waves that became smaller and smaller the closer she came to the island, and by then it was dark.

~

She ran up with the basket and lit the lamps in the kitchen and sitting room, lit the stove, then went upstairs, took a deep breath and opened the closet door, holding the cat in front of her like a shield.

He slumped like a sack in the sudden light. Ingrid stood there without speaking. He reached out for the kitten, said Koshka and smiled, and rubbed his nose against the kitten’s.

Ingrid asked if he was German, Deutsch . . . ?

He didn’t understand.

Distraught, she told him that a German troop carrier had been bombed and noticed he had removed the bandage on one hand, he must have used his teeth, his skin was healing, his fingernails looked like tiny pink shells.