Ingrid went out and considered rowing to Stangholmen again to talk to Inga, or putting out some nets, instead though she threw up, looked down at the vomit and wondered what she had eaten, rooted around in it with her fingers, as if searching for some lost memory, until she felt stupid and went in and washed and started rolling lefse dough into perfectly round cakes as her tears flowed and neither of them spoke.

“Ca’ tha cope?” Barbro said before they went to bed.

“Yes, I can,” Ingrid said.

~

They got up before daybreak, gave the sheep a full ration of cow fodder and rowed to the village. Margot’s son, Markus, wasn’t old enough to drive a small lorry, but did so anyway, he transported barrels of herring, sacks of flour and supplies as well as people to the military camps on the main island.

Ingrid and Barbro sat on the back with Jenny and three other women who had various complaints to present: one of them had an issue with Henriksen’s Board, a second wanted the Germans to give back the boat they had requisitioned from her husband, or at least to let him “borrow” it for the spring. Ingrid didn’t find out what Jenny was after, she was silent, she was in Barbro’s hands.

~

An army of vacant-eyed, brown-clad figures was streaming through the camp gates as they arrived, Russian prisoners of war on their way to work on the roads. Behind them five half-cylinders of corrugated iron stretched out over the ground like gigantic ridges between furrows in a field, beneath the virgin snow that had melted along their tops. In front of the telegraph office stood a green jeep with the Red Cross symbol on the bonnet and doors, spewing grey exhaust fumes into the cold.

Markus waited until the column had passed, got out and struck up a conversation with a uniformed soldier. They discussed, pointed and clearly came to some agreement. Markus returned and shouted that the women should get down from the back of the lorry and follow him.

They walked in single file down towards a massive block of ice, which in fact was a concrete bunker, where Markus came to a halt in front of an unpainted door and knocked twice and waited until a soldier stuck his head out and asked in broken Norwegian what they wanted. Markus said something about the scales, the steelyard, he had been promised he would have it today, but said nothing about the women.

Jenny screamed that they wanted to talk to Hargel, he was a good man.

The soldier considered the request and opened the door.