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eyes.
    “I’ll find out eventually,” she repeated to herself, and yawned as she stroked the dog behind the ear.

 
    TUESDAY 29 SEPTEMBER
    K aren Borg had had a restless night. Not in itself an unusual occurrence. She was always tired in the evenings, and fell asleep within minutes of
going to bed. The problem was that she always woke up again. Mostly at about five o’clock in the morning. She would still be tired and heavy with sleep, but incapable of drifting back into
the world of dreams. Her problems seemed immense at night, even the ones that by day were little more than fleeting shadows. Things that were so easy to play down in the light of day as mundane,
unthreatening, or mere irritations, became in this transition period before dawn pervasive menacing spectres looming over her. All too often she would lie there twisting and turning until half past
six or so, and then drop into a deep unconscious sleep until the alarm clock jerked her out of it only half an hour later.
    Last night she’d woken at two, drenched in sweat. She’d been sitting in an aeroplane with no floor, and the passengers were having to balance without safety belts on little
projections attached to the aircraft walls. After clinging on tight until she was faint from exhaustion, she felt the plane go into a sudden steep descent towards the ground. She woke as it crashed
into a hill. Dreams about plane crashes were supposed to be a sign of lack of control over one’s life. But she didn’t feel that could apply to her.
    It was a bright autumn day for once. It had been pouring with rain all week, but last night the temperature had risen to fifteen degrees Celsius, and the sun was making a final effort to remind
everyone that it was not so very long since summer after all. The trees on Olaf Ryes Plass were already turning reddish yellow, and the light was so strong that even the Pakistani shopkeepers
looked pale as they set up their wares on the street outside their kiosks and grocery shops. There was a roar of traffic from Toftes Gata, but the air smelt surprisingly fresh and clean.
    When Karen had become the youngest—and only female—partner in Greverud & Co. five years previously, she and Nils had seriously discussed leaving the Grünerløkka area.
They could easily afford to, and Grünerløkka hadn’t developed the way everyone was anticipating at the time she acquired a flat in a block then under threat of demolition but
reprieved by the Oslo City Renovation Project. The rescue had been a halfhearted attempt at restoration, at an insane cost, and resulted in a fifteen-fold rent increase in three years. The least
well-off had to move out, and had it not been for the fact that the creditors had nothing to gain by forcing the whole property company into liquidation, it might have been disastrous. But Karen
had sold the flat at the right time, just before the big property crash in 1987, and had emerged with a reasonable sum for her new abode, a loft apartment in the adjoining block, which had
miraculously escaped the Renovation Project because the residents had themselves undertaken to carry out the City Council’s area conservation plans.
    Karen and Nils had really set their hearts on moving. But late one extraordinary Saturday night a year or so ago they had sat down and analysed their motives. They compiled a list of pros and
cons, as if preparing an answer to an examination question. They ultimately concluded that they should use the money to extend their little flat instead. They strengthened the housing
association’s finances by purchasing the remainder of the loft, almost 200 square metres. It was very luxurious by the time it was completed and had risen enormously in value. They had never
regretted it. When they’d both come to accept with remarkable equanimity that they would not have children, a tacit admission that had developed between them by the time they had been
abstaining from contraception for four or