Karen is grateful and annoyed in equal measure when she is snapped out of her reverie by her phone. She checks her watch: ten past seven. She had promised Smeed he would have his daily updates by eight. Or had she told him seven? If this is him calling to demand it, I won’t be able to keep it polite, she has time to think while digging through her coat pocket. She is relieved to find that it’s not Jounas Smeed calling.

‘Hi, Aylin!’ she says and leans back. ‘You have no idea how happy I am it’s you.’

A chuckle on the other end. A small one. Hesitant.

‘Really? Well, I’m actually not sure why I’m calling. Just had a minute and thought . . .’

Sadness suddenly washes over Karen. It feels like something she wants to hold on to is dissolving and slipping through her fingers. Is this what they’ve come to? Do they need a special reason to call each other now after being friends for ten years? They first got to know each other when Karen had just moved back to Doggerland, crippled by grief. Aylin had just divorced Eirik’s brother. After four years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive, Aylin had found out that her husband had fallen in love with a Norwegian flight attendant whom he’d managed to knock up on the first try. And Eirik had fought a three-front war, determined to both bring Karen back from the dead and console his ex-sister-in-law, while struggling with his parents’ revulsion at what they called ‘his choice of lifestyle’. Battered and broken, the three of them had supported each other, like a rickety three-legged stool.

A couple of years later, Marike had joined their group and, soon after, Kore had turned Eirik’s world upside down. And then Bo Ramnes had done the same to Aylin’s. But rather than bringing a new friend into their circle, his appearance had led to Aylin drifting away. Bo Ramnes turned out to have no interest in socialising with a couple of gays, a Danish art hag and a copper. And the feeling was mutual.

Maybe I should have tried harder, Karen thinks now and presses the phone to her ear to shut out the pub noise.

‘Good thinking,’ she says, ‘it’s been too long. I don’t think we’ve seen each other since my birthday, have we?’

‘Just once. I actually visited you in the hospital, but you were pretty out of it.’

‘Oh, right. I do remember you coming to see me. That was a good book you gave me, by the way.’

‘I know I should have been in touch more, but things have just been so . . .’

Aylin trails off again.

‘Don’t worry about it, I know you have a lot on your plate. Because you were going to back to work, weren’t you, now that the kids are both in nursery?’