She doesn’t want to remember the autumn that followed, the nagging and the video games, the sleet and slush of the first weeks of December. Or the row with John that morning when she was angry with him for being hungover after celebrating yet another high-profile win in court for Gallagher, Smith & Hornby. His insistence that he hadn’t forgotten, that he was fine to drop Mathis off at the dentist on his way to work like he’d promised, so long as he was allowed to finish his cup of coffee first, and couldn’t Karen just please shut up until he was properly awake at least, and where the fuck was the paracetamol?

She doesn’t want to remember snarling that he wasn’t in a state to drive their son or himself anywhere. Or getting into the driver’s seat with a sense of self-righteous resentment at having to chauffeur her hungover husband around, instead of enjoying the lie-in she’d been looking forward to for two months. Or ignoring John when he put his hand on her knee in a gesture of conciliation at the Waltham Abbey exit on the M25. Or how the world ended three seconds later . . .

*

The sound of Uncle Lars puffing and panting his way up the basement steps calls her back to the present. Dazed, as though only just returned from a long journey, Karen meets her aunt’s eyes.

‘How are you holding up?’ Ingeborg asks and puts a hand, coarse like fish scales, over her own.

Chapter 18

18

One after the other, they show up, as she’d known they would. Thirty minutes later, the kitchen is full of people hugging her or shaking her hand, depending on whether they’ve met before or not.

Finn is the first to arrive. He still lives on the farm, in one of the detached wings, and has just returned after celebrating Christmas with his in-laws in Lysvik. Now he strides up to the kitchen table and spreads his arms wide. Karen stands up and disappears into a bear hug.

He’s still good-looking, she notes. Older, but as attractive as ever, despite grey hairs at his temples and the fact that he seems to be sucking his stomach in a little when he pushes her away with his hands on her shoulder and slowly shakes his head.

‘My God, Karen. You’re supposed to be ten, not an old bag,’ he says with a grin.

‘Finn!’ exclaims a blonde woman standing behind him.

‘This is Jannike, my wife,’ Finn says. ‘Well, you’ve met before. And this is our little Trailer. Or the runt, as Mum puts it. Turned up just when we thought we were done.’

He pulls a grumpy boy of about thirteen over. Karen searches her memory and is relieved to come up with a name.