“Just sling ’em on board,” Magnus said. He was standing in the midst of the same crowd of men, all staring at the new arrival, half-smoked fags in their mouths and puffs of smoke dispersing in the clear, cold air.

“And the money?” the blacksmith shouted.

“It’s coming.”

The blacksmith hesitated, dumped three moth-eaten sheepskins onto the deck, raising a cloud of dust, then two new-looking rugs and three grey woollen blankets, which fluttered down like sails. Magnus waited until the last had landed, signalled to the boy who was always with Ole and was now at the bow.

He jerked the mooring rope upwards with a flourish, causing the loop to slip off the bollard on the quay. Another boy was standing on the bait-house roof at the stern and performed the same piece of magic with the aft mooring rope. Magnus himself unhitched the spring line and glanced up at Ole in the wheelhouse. Ingrid realised she had missed something. Ole engaged the clutch and gave full throttle, the Salthammer heeled over, almost sending her flying, and ploughed across the mirror-like surface of the harbour, dividing the village into two with a foaming furrow of a wake.

Magnus waved to the blacksmith, who stood motionless. The men laughed. Ingrid bent down to pick up the skins and blankets.

“Shall I help you, young lady?” Magnus shouted in her ear.

The crowd of men laughed even louder, the puffs of smoke, their shamefaced, evasive eyes. Magnus held a hand in the air, directed a black finger at the man laughing loudest and told him to pick up the skins and help her.

“Pronto.”

9

It was night when they docked at the trading post. Anja and the children were asleep, also the two younger Skarsvåg brothers, Sverre and Helmer. But Ingrid and Arne were woken by the engine stopping and went on deck in the steely-blue darkness, it was windless and snowing lightly. Magnus and one of the men stood by the rail smoking, a little further away sat Ole and his friend on the foredeck talking in low voices in the silence.

Magnus gave her the mug he was holding. She turned it and took a mouthful of lukewarm coffee. He smiled.

“Your home-ground?”

Ingrid nodded from behind a glass wall, the landing stage beneath the quay, the Little Quay, where she moored when she was going to buy her provisions or work at the trading post, the steps up through the hole in the quay and the snow that settled on her hair and shoulders and bare hands, on her clothes and the rim of the coffee mug, turning into drops of water she slurped into her mouth until she checked herself, because Magnus was watching her with eyes that were impossible to avoid.

“So you don’t want to go home?”