Ingrid gave an uncomfortable laugh and said the Hætta family should stay where they were. Barbro, who was standing with the coffee pot in her hand, turned and looked at her in surprise.

“But the’ ca’ bi hier, can’t the’?”

“No, the’ can’t bi hier,” Ingrid shouted, losing her composure.

“Hvafor not?”

“Hvar’s th’ money? Hvur ar’ we goen’ t’ feed ’em?”

Barbro shook her head, put the cups on the table, poured the coffee and muttered something incomprehensible as she went back and banged the coffee pot down on the stove.

“The girl needs to go to school,” Ingrid said flatly.

Henriksen blew on the coffee, looked around for some sugar, gave up, poured the coffee into the saucer and began to slurp, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said it was the Board that made the decisions, Ingrid had to comply.

“No,” Ingrid said.

For the first time he looked directly at her, but instead of losing his temper he fell into a reverie, and Ingrid couldn’t decide whether she was watching a display of a guilty man’s shame-filled repentance in those infected eyes of his, or yet another manifestation of dotage, or war, as if Henriksen, too, had been stricken by it.

“We can take the three lads from Hammerfest,” she said. “Or Skarsvåg. The ones that are in Molandsvika.”

Now he looked even more surprised. “They know how to handle the boats,” she continued. “And fish. They can work.”

“But they have to go to school, too.”

Ingrid said nothing.

Henriksen sipped his coffee, looking as though he had just won a major victory, leaned forwards with a self-important grunt, then fished out a creased document and placed it on the table between them. Ingrid recognised the form and read that the Board had found Barrøy suitable as a place of temporary residence for between five and eight persons . . . all whilst wondering how she could elicit from him – without asking outright – what exactly had happened here when he came with Hargel before Christmas, what they had done to her.

Henriksen conceded that the three young men might not be so happy in Molandsvika, although who the hell was in these times.

Ingrid asked what was wrong with the times.

He shouted that he had never been able to work her out, the bitch.

Ingrid asked where the Leutnant was, Hargel.

Henriksen first answered the question – in the Fort on Nordøya – then said, what sort of a question was that, for Christ’s sake!

Ingrid told him to clear off, an’ don’t show tha face hier again.