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currents clean the site. Come.’
    Hojgaard led me into another room by a connecting door. A bank of TV screens was against the wall, operators sitting in front of them. On each screen, I saw shoals of salmon swimming this way and that, their silver flesh sparkling in the murky dark of the Atlantic.
    ‘We watch them twenty-four hours a day,’ Martin told me. ‘They are important to us and we watch them as if they were our own children. And like children, we feed them when they are hungry. The cameras also show when the fish are rising to the surface and we can activate the feeding pipes in the cage by computers from here. It means we only feed them when they want it and we do not waste food.’
    The sight of the salmon fighting against the tidal waters was hypnotic. They muscled their way through it effortlessly, their black-speckled flanks pulsing with the vitality of natural athletes. Hojgaard saw my fascination with them and smiled quietly to himself. I guessed it was a reaction he was used to.
    ‘The cages are thirty metres deep and those furthest from shore are two kilometres out. We want them as close to open water as possible but it would be too risky to put them any further out. You see the cage here?’ Hojgaard pointed at a screen showing the surface section of a cage, waves thundering up and over its curved aluminium edges so that it rocked with the movement. A corrugated standing area on its outer edge bucked like a crazed fairground attraction.
    ‘The waves are wild like the salmon. Out there they can be six metres high and we cannot take the risk of the cages breaking free. Okay, come. I will get you clothing. You will start loading and stacking the crates.’
    The work was hard and laborious but it felt good to use muscles that I hadn’t flexed in a while. A comforting ache soon hummed in my biceps and calves as I strained to find the best technique, matching brain with brawn and enjoying doing so. My fellow workers seemed a friendly enough bunch. They were relaxed and went about their work quietly and seemingly contentedly. Or at least most of them did.
    Late that first morning, as I hefted crates that seemed to grow heavier with every one that I stacked, I suddenly felt a rough edge of hard plastic barge into my lower back. I took an involuntary step forward, before turning to see the back of a short, sturdy figure striding away on powerful legs, carrying a loaded crate as if it was made of balsa wood. It wasn’t, though – the ache in my back was testament to that.
    He didn’t pause, and I had to think that he hadn’t realized the crate had caught me on the way past. A few minutes later, the same guy was coming back, and I saw that he was as wide as he was tall, a scowl plastered across thickset features. I raised my head in greeting but got only a glare in return, and had to step aside as the now-empty crate was thrust into the space that I’d been occupying.
    ‘Nice to meet you,’ I called after him.
    He stopped in his tracks and slowly turned round. Dark-eyed and dark-haired, he glowered at me under heavy brows. He spat out a sentence in angry Faroese then stood for a moment, seemingly demanding a response. When one didn’t come, since I didn’t understand a word he’d said, he sneered and turned away.
    I was left bemused. Maybe something had been lost in translation and he had just been welcoming me to the fish farm, albeit in his own gruff manner. I doubted it though.
    Samal sidled up to me, a wary look over his shoulder to make sure that the man had gone.
    ‘That is Toki Rønne,’ he explained with a shake of his head. ‘He does not like anyone. He is always in a bad mood.’
    ‘It’s not just me then?’
    Samal smiled apologetically. ‘Well, no. Not just you. But it is true he has decided he does not like you.’
    ‘Great. Why is that?’
    The man’s shoulders rose and fell. ‘With Toki, who knows? But he has a friend he wants to work here. He has spoken to Harra Hojgaard many