She lies on the kitchen floor with an eiderdown over her head, feels the house shaking, and is struck on the temple by a rubber cosh resembling a black snake, which is lifted again and hits her above the ear and on the cheek, several white flashes and a lasting silence that fades into a distant sound of running water, and it isn’t clean, it is urine, and it is hers, the hot smell of herself, her nostrils filling with blood . . .

They had found the sketch pad.

~

The rain was lashing against the roof and walls. She got up and vomited, lay down again and slept in the kitchen until the island had become a gleaming armour-plate of brown ice. She rose to her feet and went out into the last gusts of wind, watched the weather clearing above the mountains in the east, the sun an inflamed eye above the horizon in the south, she was at the end of the road, if Suzanne was ever going to come, it had to be now. But the days passed, and the nights, and vanished without trace, and it was Barbro who came.

3

Barbro was rowed over by Adolf from Malvika and his son Daniel. With them they also had a sack of flour, a churn of milk and a ewe in lamb. Ingrid had watched them coming for more than an hour without a thought in her head, without any expectations.

Now she watched her aunt step over the gunwale and hobble ashore and kneel down and with excited whoops kiss the ground. Ingrid could hear Daniel laughing and watched as Adolf eased the sheep over the side of the boat and into the sea. She waded out and dragged it ashore, where it stood shaking itself like a dog. She laughed without doing so, straightened up and looked straight at them, and they looked back as if they recognised her, and she said it was good to see them, what date was it?

They said it was the second week in February.

“Wednesday.”

Ingrid was told that Barbro had paid for the sheep with money, and for the milk and flour, but they would like the churn back.

They carried it up between them and emptied the contents into one of Barrøy’s pails while Barbro sang and waved her arms about and cried and said hallelujah and made such a fool of herself that Ingrid had to look away.

She asked if they wanted something to eat.

Father and son said no, thank you, they had brought some food with them, but Adolf wanted a word with her and seemed to have to pluck up the courage before he was able to stutter that he had her færing in his boat shed, he didn’t know if she wanted it back or perhaps rather when she wanted it back.

Ingrid screwed up her eyes and said she didn’t know, either. What did he think?