Ingrid has no real objection to the suggestion regarding the brassiere, even though there has always been a lack of confidentiality between them, as Eva Sofie regards the war as a personal insult and can’t stop herself telling people that she is the one who has suffered the greatest losses, both a boyfriend and a secretarial career have gone up in smoke as a result of this hell on earth. And everyone can visualise the man Eva Sofie lost on the northern front in the first phase of the war, because she walks around with a photograph of him in the breast pocket of her uniform, next to a watch and a pencil with bite-marks and lipstick on the end, and shows the picture to both those who want to see it and those who have already seen it: a grainy photograph of a young man so far away in a field that he could laugh and cry and no-one would be any the wiser. He was ten years older than Eva Sofie, while Eva Sofie is one year older than Ingrid, and she has no children, come to mention it – she does so herself all the time – to make a point of another personal tragedy caused by the war.

When Eva Sofie is not on duty, which as a rule she is, she spends her time at home baking, in a house that has been partially reconstructed after the bombing, using sifted wheat flour, sugar and a few small chopped nuts that she gets from the hospital kitchen, or steals, and she takes the cakes to work and shares them around, with a face as if she is giving injections. The patients like and fear her in equal measure, while the staff are used to her. And the cakes are good, they are sweet, with these nuts and coarse sugar that resembles scorched ice crystals.

This time she brought the bra with stays, which turned out to be too tight, tight enough for Eva Sofie’s assessment of the difference in their respective sizes to be proved correct, yet too tight for Ingrid to put it on at first, as the wounds on her back were still painful; they packed it away in a small, blue suitcase, which Eva Sofie had also brought from home, with brass fittings on all eight corners, plus a light-brown corset.