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said.
    ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
    ‘I wanted to check you were all right. Your father looked angry.’
    ‘We can’t talk here. You know that.’
    ‘All right, then,’ Lars said. ‘What if I picked you up after dinner?’
    ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Else said.
    ‘How does five o’clock sound? I’ll wait for you on the road. Just find an excuse to leave the house.’
    ‘Lars …’
    ‘Five o’clock,’ he said.
    ‘You know I can’t meet you. It’s Sunday.’
    ‘Heaven forbid,’ he said and stepped close to press warm lips to her cheek. Lars was slow and self-assured when he moved away towards the church, keeping his pace steady even when Pastor Seip appeared from behind its wall. Else turned back to the marble cross and reread its names. Gregor Sundt. Carl Hansen. Per Henrik Wiig. The minister must realise she and Lars had been together. She hoped he would leave, but was not surprised when she next looked to discover him standing there still. Pastor Seip watched her from his spot among the tombstones. Lars had already strutted from sight.
    Else started across the grass with her eyes on her shoes. The minister called to her as she approached.
    ‘Was there something of interest back there?’
    ‘I was looking at the memorial cross,’ she said.
    ‘What were you doing with Lars Reiersen?’
    ‘Nothing,’ she said.
    ‘Is that so?’
    With an impatient wave of his hand, Pastor Seip dismissed her and Else hurried out of his way to the front of the church. The crowd was thinning as the parishioners set off for home. She found her parents by the gate.
    ‘There you are,’ her mother said.
    ‘Where did you get to?’ said her father. ‘We’ll miss the ferry.’
    He led them onto the street, where a shadow fell from the trees at the roadside in long fingers that reached for the cars parked opposite. Lars was climbing into the back seat of his father’s Cadillac, whose chrome and glass seemed alive in the sun. Reiersen leaned an elbow on the roof above the driver’s door and fanned his face with the brim of his hat. Karin Reiersen smiled in the passenger seat at Dagny.
    ‘See you on Thursday for the luncheon,’ she said.
    ‘See you on Thursday,’ Dagny said.
    Else trailed after her father down Dronning Mauds gate, glad to put distance between her parents and the minister. As they walked, the sound of an engine grew louder behind them. Reiersen’s car raced by in a haze of churned dirt.
    ‘Damned dollarglis ,’ said Johann of the Cadillac. He sucked in his cheeks and marched on to the Longpier, where the ferry was boarding.
    Else changed out of her Sunday dress when she arrived home and crossed the garden to the milking barn. Once the cow had been fed, she returned to the farmhouse to help prepare dinner. Her mother gutted a coalfish while Else washed the potatoes that she had carried up from the cellar. She scraped her knife under their skins and carved out the bruises before filling a pot and setting it to boil.
    When the carrots had been sliced and the peas shelled, she mounted the stairs to her bedroom and pulled on her bathing suit. Else skipped outside and bolted barefoot to the pier, wincing when she trod on the cherry stones dropped by magpies over the yard. This would be the last swim of the summer, she expected. There would be no more trips in Lars’s boat to the skerry. She let her towel fall onto the rocks that separated the lawn and the pier and, as she stepped over the planks of timber to the water’s edge,thought of the whirling in her stomach during those excursions, when she stood on the islands’ high ridges and the boys shouted for her to jump.
    Else dipped her toes into the fjord and drew them out with a sharp breath. She lingered in a patch of sun, anticipating the sting of the sea and glancing after her father, who was rowing his skiff inland to set crab traps in the shallows. In a single movement, she shut her eyes and pinched her nose and leapt. Her body plunged