Another quick glance at the clock radio: almost half past seven, no point trying to go back to sleep. But no point getting up just yet, either, he decides and turns to look at the face on the pillow next to his. He watches Karen’s eyelids twitch, listens to her light snoring, studies her bare feet that are sticking out of a pair of tartan flannel pyjama bottoms. The scars are still there, a pale line along her ankle, a pink worm wreathed around her left knee. Old scars; there had been no need for surgery this time. She got lucky, her injuries are superficial, the doctor had said.

Not all of them, Leo had thought to himself back then, at the hospital, when he had looked into Karen’s terrified eyes and suddenly felt completely calm.

But they will heal, he thinks now.

She’s going to wake up soon and everything will be back to normal. She’s going to yell at us for not having descaled the coffee pot, point out that leaving towels in a pile on the bathroom floor won’t make them clean, sigh about the amount of time Sigrid spends staring at her phone instead of studying.

But she’s not going to say anything about them moving out.

Chapter 86

86

Annoyed, Bo Ramnes gets up off the sofa.

Is a little bit of peace and quiet too much to ask? he thinks and turns the TV up. Bad enough I have to sit here all alone on a Saturday night like some loser. Now I have my evening ruined by some inbred hayseed kids who have nothing better to do than to drive their fucking mopeds and outrageously expensive ATVs around?

Truth be told, he shouldn’t have turned the TV on in the first place; he should be reading up to prepare for the autumn, shouldn’t have poured that second whiskey. Or is it his third? Whatever. After everything he’s been put through, he has a right to unwind.

The conversation with Yngve Kroon had been challenging; it had taken him over an hour to convince the party secretary it was all a big misunderstanding, that he is still both willing and fit to be a candidate. It had been an hour of being questioned like a schoolboy. Of answering meekly and appropriately. Yes, Aylin has been having a hard time lately, but she’s doing better now. Just stressed, she’s had a lot on her plate with the children and her mother being sick, cancer, actually, yes, terrible, but it looks like she’s going to pull through. And now Aylin and her mother have gone away together to rest up and recover. Yes, the kids went with them, of course.