Ingrid smiled and said she hadn’t made any mistakes, not since her schooldays. He grabbed the letter again, looked at it and, after a few grunts of acknowledgement, repeated that she was a remarkable woman, before adding – as she rubbed out his amendments and folded the letter – that she was intelligent, but of the more intuitive rather than the reflective type, and he found that confusing.

Ingrid laughed and asked if he was sure it wasn’t him who was mad.

He still didn’t laugh, but he made no move to leave, there was something else he wanted to discuss with her: he had received some money which she was to have, and a letter from her parish priest, a certain Johannes Malmberget. He hadn’t wanted to give it to her before for fear of confusing her on top of everything else that was going on, apparently this priest had borrowed money from her father, you see, and was now entreating forgiveness for having hoped for so many years after her father’s death that nobody would remember, now he wanted to pay his dues, the letter said.

The doctor said he considered this invidious.

“Invidious?”

He explained what “invidious” meant and Ingrid closed her eyes. The old rural parish priest who disappeared when war broke out, with his young wife and two adolescent children, a mysterious, shadowy figure, who’d had an impact on Ingrid’s life before, in a crucial way. Now she saw him disappearing again, as before, and said she needed to know how many had gone down with the ship.

“You keep changing the subject,” the doctor said. “Which ship?”

“The Rigel.”

“I see, no, they never publish the casualty figures.”

This, by the way, was one of those things she should cast from her mind.

He got to his feet, stood with one hand on the bedhead and repeated that she shouldn’t be so hard on Suzanne in the letter if she wanted her to come back. In addition, she should allow old Ingvaldsen to sit here, she might be leaving, but the old man was going nowhere, he would never be able to remember anything either, and a good job, too.

Ingrid asked what had happened to him.

“Ask him,” the doctor said.

Ingrid eyed him. He said:

“He lost his wife and three sons when the town was bombed, and a brother. He dug them out of the ruins with his own hands. He’s been here ever since.”