Now, she listens to the laughter inside. Yes, everything is exactly as lovely as they planned. Everything is as it should be. Except that she wants to be alone. To hear, even if just for one moment, the sound of silence.

Just one more night, you can do it, she tells herself and takes another deep drag. Kore, Eirik and Marike will in all likelihood go home straight after breakfast tomorrow. But her mother and Harry are staying one more night, she reminds herself. They’re not flying back to Spain until the day after tomorrow. Two more mornings of pretending not to see Harry affectionately pat her mother’s bum, pretending not to hear the sound of stolen kisses every time she turns her back. Thirty-six more hours of biting back the caustic comments about to leap off her tongue every time her mother refers to the seventy-six-year-old Harry Lampard as her new ‘boyfriend’.

And then there’s Sigrid.

Why couldn’t the kid just stay with her dad after finally reconnecting after years of estrangement? It’s bloody Christmas, a time to spend with family, Karen grumbles inwardly and sucks so hard on her cigarette it burns her fingertips.

‘I won’t be staying long,’ Sigrid had happily assured her when she turned up unannounced in the kitchen almost three hours ago. ‘Just stopping by.’

And then that wave of warmth crashing over Karen before she could stop it. That unreasonable, frightening joy that rushes through her every time she sees Sigrid. All the things there is no room for in her life anymore.

I won’t be staying long. How Sigrid had planned to cover the mile and a half to her own house at the other end of the village after two glasses of juniper beer and at least one shot of snaps is her affair. Karen is not on the job tonight. And besides, she’s tired.