‘Oh no, lambkin, this old ewe isn’t so easily fooled. If you’re not careful, you’re going to throw out your back, always leaning on your right leg. Carrying you around on my hip all day long when you were little gave me a slipped disc, so I know what I’m talking about.’

Karen slowly sits down on the bed next to her mother.

‘Fine; I’m still in pain sometimes,’ she admits, ‘but it gets a bit better every day. And you’re going home the day after tomorrow anyway, so we only miss out on one day together.’

Eleanor heaves a heavy sigh.

‘Fine. I’m not the kind to cry over a thing like that, but I’m worried about you being in pain. And you’re looking far too pleased.’

Karen turns her head and looks at her with raised eyebrows.

‘Pleased?’

‘You know exactly what I mean. You can’t get out of here fast enough, leave all the people who care about you and sit around in some hotel room, all alone.’

Karen shrugs.

‘You know what I’m like.’

‘Not what you’re like, what you’ve become, you mean.’

‘And you know why, too,’ Karen retorts tersely.

‘Yes, Karen, I know exactly why. But it’s getting to be time to deal with that. You’re not dead yet.’

No, I’m not, Karen counters inwardly. I was the one who lived . . .

She gets back up and resumes packing.

‘Well, if you insist on going to that godforsaken place, at least make sure you visit Ingeborg and Lars,’ Eleanor says after a while. ‘She would never forgive you if you don’t. Or me.’

‘And since when do you care about what Aunt Ingeborg thinks? Unless I’m misremembering, you moved to the other end of the country to get away from Dad’s Noorö relatives.’

‘You know perfectly well that . . .’

‘. . . you moved to Langevik because he inherited this house and the fishing rights from his grandfather. But admit it, you were relieved!’

Eleanor fails to supress a smile.

‘My goodness, was it ever terrible up there,’ she says. ‘I don’t know how I lived with it for as long as I did! Imagine, living in the same house as your parents-in-law and less than three hundred yards from your sister-in-law. You couldn’t swing a cat without hitting an Eiken. Petty crooks the lot of them, and they made plenty of moonshine in those sheds of theirs, but everyone had to say grace and go to church every Sunday, without fail. I would probably have flung myself into the sea if we hadn’t left that horrid place.’