At her words, Ingeborg gets back up, fetches a bowl of sugar cubes from the sideboard and an unlabelled glass bottle from the cupboard above it. No glasses, Karen notes and shakes her head when her aunt holds up the sugar bowl and the bottle with a querying look.

‘I’m driving,’ she says. ‘And I’m on the job.’

‘Since when has that ever stopped anyone?’ Ingeborg Eiken retorts and pops two sugar cubes into her own mug. Then she pulls the stopper out of the bottle and pours a generous slug over the sugar before filling their mugs with coffee, Karen’s first, then her own. She stirs hers, then leans forward and sniffs it.

‘Are you sure you don’t want some? No, of course, you probably don’t drink karsk down on the mainland anymore. I suppose it’s all expresso and cuppa-chino and whatnot these days.’

Karen smiles and refrains from correcting her about the names of the coffee drinks and from pointing out that Heimö can hardly be considered the mainland. Ingeborg already knows. It’s just the kind of thing you’re expected to say up here.

‘So you want my help, do you? And what kind of help would that be, if I may ask?’

‘Tell me everything you know. What people are saying about each other up here.’

‘So you’re looking for gossip? Fine, I figured. But I’m not going to say a word against my boys. Let’s be clear about that.’

Ingeborg’s eyes flash dangerously when Karen replies.

‘No, what I need to know about my own relatives I’ll find out for myself. I’m talking about the Stuubs, Trystes, Huss and Groths and all the rest of them. I can’t keep track of all the names and who’s related to whom.’

She decides to pretend Thorstein Byle hasn’t already told her some things. She has trouble remembering what he said anyway.

‘Well, start by narrowing your list down to two. Huss, Tryste and Stuub are all the same family. Old Huss had no sons. One of his daughters married a Scandinavian of Norwegian extraction called Tryste. The other married a Stuub. I think he was from Frisel. Apparently, a local man wasn’t good enough for the Huss girls. They had to go find someone fancy.’

‘Yes, I noticed The Complex is still standing,’ Karen puts in and blows on her coffee.

Ingeborg makes a sound halfway between an amused chuckle and a snort of derision.

‘Yes, that eyesore is probably going to outlast the Gudheim stones themselves unless someone takes it upon themselves to burn the dreadful thing down. But you liked it as a child, unless I’m misremembering. If you’d married William, you could be living there now.’

Karen picks her jaw off the floor while Ingeborg lets out a smug chuckle and reaches for her cup.

‘Are you talking about William Tryste?’