'South?' He hung on to the word. 'To Somalia?'
'Erik has an offer. We haven't given them our answer yet,' she said quickly. 'But we're giving it serious consideration. Partly because of Matteus. We'd like him to see some of the country and learn the language. If we leave in August, we'll be there in time for the start of the school year.'
Three years, he thought. Three years without Ingrid and Matteus. In Norway only at Christmas. Letters and postcards, and his grandson taller each visit, and a year older, such abrupt changes.
'I have no doubt that you're needed down there,' he said, making an effort to keep his voice steady. 'You're not thinking that my welfare should stop you from going, are you? I'm not 90, Ingrid.'
She blushed a little.
'I'm thinking about Grandmother too.'
'I'll take care of my mother. You're going to crush that salad to bits,' he said.
'I don't like it that you're all alone,' she said.
'I have Kollberg, you know.'
'But he's just a dog!'
'You should be glad he doesn't understand what you're saying.' Sejer cast a glance at Kollberg who was sleeping peacefully under the table. 'We do pretty well. I think you should go if that's what you really want to do. Is Erik tired of treating appendicitis and swollen tonsils?'
'Things are different there,' she said. 'We can be so much more useful.'
'What about Matteus? What will you do with him?'
'He'll go to the American kindergarten, along with a whole bunch of other children. And besides,' she said, 'he actually has relatives there that he's never met. I don't like that. I want him to know everything.'
'American?' he said. 'What do you mean by 'know everything'?'
He thought about Matteus's real parents and their fate.
'We won't tell him about his mother until he's older.'
'You should go!' he said.
She looked at him and smiled. 'What do you think Mama would have said?'
'She would have said the same thing. And then she would have had a good cry in bed later on.'
'But you won't?'
Matteus came running over with a picture book in one hand and an apple in the other. ''It was a dark and stormy night.' Doesn't that sound a little scary?' Sejer said.
'Ha!' his grandson snorted, climbing up on to his lap.
'The coals are hot,' Ingrid said. 'I'm going to put on the steaks.'
'Put them on,' he said.
She placed the meat on the grill, four pieces in all, and went inside to get the drinks.
'I have a green rubber python in my room,' Matteus whispered. 'Should we put it in her shoe?'
Sejer hesitated. 'I don't know. Do you think that's a good idea?'
'Don't you?'
'As a matter of fact, I don't.'
'Old people are such chickens,' he said. 'I'm the one she'll blame.'
'OK,' he said. 'I'll look the other way.'
Matteus hopped down, ran to get his snake, and then carefully stuffed it inside his mother's clog.
'You can keep reading now.'
Sejer cringed at the thought of the awful rubber snake and how it would feel against her toes. ''It was a dark and stormy night. There were robbers in the mountains, and wolves as well.' Are you sure this isn't too scary?'
'Mama has read it to me lots of times.' He bit into his apple and chewed contentedly.
'Don't take such big bites,' Sejer said. 'You might get it caught in your throat.'
'Read, Grandpa!'
I must be getting old, he thought. Old and anxious.
''It was a dark and stormy night,'' he began again, and just at that moment Ingrid came back, carrying three bottles of beer and a Coke. He stopped and gave her a long look. Matteus did too.
'Why are you staring at me like that? What's wrong with you?'
'Nothing,' they said in unison, bending over their book. She set the bottles on the table, opened them, and looked around for her shoes. Picked them up, turned them upside down, and knocked them together three times. Nothing happened. It's stuck in the toe, they thought gleefully. Then everything happened at once. Sejer's son-in- law Erik appeared in the doorway, Matteus jumped down from his lap and rushed across the room. Kollberg leaped up from under the table and wagged his tail so hard that the bottles fell to the floor, and Ingrid stuck her feet inside her shoes.
Solvi stood in her room, taking things out of a box. For a moment she straightened up and peered outside. Directly across the street, Fritzner was standing at his window, watching her. He had a glass in his hand. Now he raised it, as if offering a toast.
Solvi turned her back on him at once. True, she didn't mind men looking at her, but Fritzner was bald. Imagining life with a bald man was as unthinkable as imagining life with a man who was fat. They had no place in her dreams. That her stepfather was both bald and fat didn't trouble her. Other men could be bald, but not the one she went out with. She looked up again. He was gone. He was probably sitting in his boat again, the weirdo.
She heard the doorbell ringing and went out to open the door, wearing a light-blue trouser suit with a silver belt around her waist and ballet slippers on her feet.
'Oh!' she said. 'It's you! I'm cleaning up Annie's room. Come on in. Mama and Papa will be home in a minute.'
Sejer followed her through the living room to her own room, which was next to Annie's. It was quite a bit bigger, decorated in pastels. A photograph of her sister stood on her bedside table.
'I have inherited a few things from her,' she said with an apologetic smile. 'Some knick-knacks and clothes and things like that. And if I can persuade Papa, I want to knock down the wall to Annie's room so I'll have one big room.'
'That will be very nice,' Sejer said. But at the same time he felt a little ashamed at the emotions that crept over him. He had no right to judge anyone. They were struggling to go on with their lives and had every right to do it in their own way. No one could tell anyone else how to grieve. He gave himself this little reprimand and then looked around. He had never seen a room with so many knick-knacks.
'And I'm going to get my own TV,' she said. 'With an extra antenna so I can get TV-Norway.' She bent down to a cardboard box on the floor and began pulling more things out of it. 'It's mostly books. Annie didn't have any make-up or jewellery or anything like that. Plus a bunch of CDs and cassettes.'
'Do you like to read?'
'Not really. But the bookshelves look nice when they're full.'
He nodded in agreement.
'Has something happened?'
'Yes, actually. But we don't know yet what it means.'
She took one more thing out of the box. It was wrapped in newspaper.
'So you know Magne Johnas, Solvi?'
'Yes,' she said. He thought she blushed, but she had such rosy cheeks, he couldn't be sure. 'He's living in Oslo now. Works for Gym & Greier.'
'Did you know that he and Annie once had something going?'
'Had something going?' She gave him a look of pure incomprehension.
'That they might have had a romance, or that Magne might have been in love with her, or might have tried something? Before your time?'
'Annie just laughed at him,' she said, her tone almost plaintive. 'Not that Halvor was anything to boast about. At least Magne looks like a guy should. I mean, he has muscles and everything.'
She pulled away the newspaper wrapping, avoiding his eye.
'Do you think he might have been offended?' he asked carefully as something shiny appeared in the newspaper.
