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look and I could kick myself, I ought to cut the crap and admit that I was trying to escape, but I don’t, I can’t. Instead I feign a big yawn, trying to make it look as though I really had nodded off.
    “Well, do you want to come in and join the rest of us?” he asks. “Or were you planning on having another forty winks?”
    Annoyance grows inside me, I feel my whole body being filled with a fierce resentment, but I don’t let it show, pretend not to notice the wry note in his voice, the sarcasm.
    “Be right with you,” I say, rubbing my eye, as if rubbing the sleep out of it, then I get up. He nods and grins, then turns on his heel and walks off. I wait a couple of seconds, then I bend down, pick up the blanket and shake off the fresh grass cuttings, bundle it up, tuck it under my arm and follow him, taking care to walk a little more slowly than him, I just can’t face talking to him on the way in. I walk a few yards, then stop and make a show of having stepped on something, lift one of my feet and make a face, stand on one foot and feel under my heel, stay like this until Eskil has disappeared through the veranda door, then I start walking again, force my feet across the lawn and up onto the veranda, my resentment growing and growing, but there’s no way round it. I step across the creaking veranda floor and into the living room, stop short just inside. I can hear Mum’s laughter in the kitchen, closely followed by Eskil’s pompous laugh, a laugh that drowns out everything else. A moment, then Eskil says something, I don’t quite catch it, but Mum hoots with laughter and calls him a big idiot. Everything’s as it should be: Eskil being entertaining in his usual smug fashion and Mum laughing at everything he says and does. I feel my mood growing more and more sour, I can’t face going in there and joining them, can’t face having to stand there and act as though I find Eskil as witty and entertaining as he’s trying to be.
    Then: “Hi, Jon.”
    I look round. And there’s Hilde, with a pack of Marlboro Lights in her hand. She gives me a friendly smile. She’s always friendly, Hilde, I don’t know how the hell Eskil ever managed to snare her, don’t know how she puts up with him either, he certainly doesn’t deserve her.
    “Hi,” I say, and I walk over to her, lay a hand on her bare, tanned arm, just next to her tattoo, she has a tattoo of some Asian symbol on her upper arm. “Long time, no see,” I say and give her a hug.
    “I know,” she says. “Last time I saw you was at Grete’s sixtieth birthday party.”
    “Ugh, don’t remind me. It’s a long time since I’ve been that drunk,” I say with a little laugh.
    She doesn’t laugh, looks straight at me and smiles kind of hesitantly, a strange little smile, as though she feels sorry for me, I don’t see why she should feel sorry for me, but that’s how it looks, as if I’d done something at Mum’s sixtieth birthday party, as if I’d made a fool of myself or something, I don’t remember making a fool of myself, but it’s possible, I suppose, I was so fucking plastered. But don’t think about that right now, it can’t have been that bad if nobody’s mentioned it.
    “So, how’re you doing?” I say.
    “Oh, fine,” she says, looking at me and smiling, smiling a perfectly ordinary smile now. “Great!” she says. “And you?”
    “Yeah, I’m doing just great!” I say, trying to sound reasonably upbeat, give her a smile.
    Two seconds.
    Then: “And the band?” I hear Eskil say.
    I turn. He saunters over to us, his sunglasses still pushed up onto his brow. He looks at me and grins.
    “How’s it going with the band?” he asks again, blinking lazily, seeming to radiate self-assurance, calm.
    “Oh, great!” I say, trying to smile back at him. “We’re hard at it!”
    He nods, waits a moment.
    “You’re not getting a bit too old for all that?” he asks.
    “Too old?”
    “To go around dreaming of becoming a pop star,” he