Nelvy squirmed and screamed, but gradually became more submissive as Ingrid poured water over her. She scrubbed her again and rinsed her for a third time. She didn’t see any lice, and now it didn’t look as if she had any mange either, only those strange bumps on her scalp.

Ingrid wrapped a tea towel around the girl’s head, put the hat in the basin and washed it too with carbolic soap, on the washboard, while Nelvy perched on the edge of the other basin watching her, both hands holding the tea towel, it looked like a turban, her fingers were long and slender.

Ingrid said they would dry the hat over the kitchen stove, it wouldn’t take long, in the meantime she could wear another. She took her up to one of the children’s rooms, where there was a chest of drawers full of clothes, and fished out a blue hat. Nelvy’s was red. She wanted a red one. Ingrid rummaged round in the drawer and found a grey one. Nelvy nodded reluctantly and wanted to put it on over the towel. Ingrid said it looked nice. Gunvor was standing in the doorway and said it looked peculiar. Nelvy didn’t seem to mind. Ingrid grabbed her slender fingers and sat gazing at them in puzzled admiration until Nelvy retracted them with a shy smile, then asked Ingrid what her name was.

Ingrid told her, and added that she lived on Barrøy, then asked her in turn what her name was, apart from Nelvy. Nelvy said she thought she was called Arvola.

Ingrid asked why she hadn’t said so before, now there was nothing about her in the Rations and Relocation Board’s papers. Nelvy said she didn’t know. She asked where Barrøy was.

“There,” Ingrid said, pointing at the wall above one bed, where there hung a picture of a smocked shepherd with a crook and three goats, which Nelvy sat staring at.

Ingrid told her she had to go and inspect the larder, left Nelvy and went downstairs and in between the rows of preserves, pickles and canned food. She sat down on the lowest shelf, where the priest’s wife kept her copper kettles and tubs of oats and flour, and was forced to acknowledge that she couldn’t put it off any longer. Moreover she was worn out, on the verge of tears, she stared blindly at bread boxes and colanders of all shapes and sizes, and thought about Nelvy’s fingers, and about the blue suitcase, the cake tin and the sack of woollen yarn, which were still aboard the Salthammer, the way forwards.

She shuddered, went out again, locked the door and gave the key to the young mother who knew her way around the black market, asked what her name was.

“Johanna . . .”