Hans rows, with the placid oar strokes of a contented man. He is wearing a black waistcoat with a watch chain without a watch, and a captain’s cap, which his brother doesn’t allow him to wear in Lofoten. Then Barbro and Maria row for a while. They are wearing their finest clothes, one in yellow, the other in blue, as always, they have woollen jumpers hanging around their shoulders, and their oars are silent spoons in a thick sauce. The boats’ long shadows glide over those of the mountains, and the tow rope bobs quietly between them, it is so quiet that the voices carry from the færing to the rowing boat behind, to the children and old Martin, who has fallen asleep on the hay: it is Hans Barrøy telling Maria they should also have had a son, didn’t she think, a playful invitation from a tipsy man to a beautiful woman. Maria says they have Lars, and Ingrid sees Barbro smiling down on the boards. She also notices that Lars isn’t listening, he is asleep in the crook of his grandfather’s arm, and she thinks she will have to do him in.

She straightens up sharply, the voices in the færing are muted, her mother turns to face her and asks if she is cold. Ingrid says no. They smile at each other in light that is becoming even bluer.

2

Now the light from the torches in the sea rises, like sleep-inducing swirls, indistinct, flickering images, and with it the first terror Ingrid felt, emanating from within herself, a personal poison which hitherto she has managed to suppress – until she finds herself lying on her back in her parents’ bed in the South Chamber, both hands covering her face, filled with the same raging fear; at her side the closet door is wide open, the eiderdown and rug have been flung aside, and the sketch pad has gone.

She sits up, stares at the gaping door and lies down again.

She has chopped firewood with a blunt axe, because she cannot both whet the axe and turn the grindstone alone, she has baked bread and now needs milk, she has scrubbed the floors of rooms where nobody stays, she has seen that the potatoes in the cellar have survived the winter frost. She has cleared a path through the snowdrifts between the buildings, even though she has no animals to tend. She has wandered around the island like the hands on a clock face, without discovering any signs of change, nor what she needs in order to be whole again.