under the table and wagged his tail so hard that the bottles fell to the floor, and Ingrid stuck her feet inside her shoes.
S酶lvi 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.
S酶lvi 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, S酶lvi?"
"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.
"He could have been. It wasn't enough for Annie to say no. She could be really snide sometimes, and she wasn't impressed by muscles. Everybody keeps on talking about how wonderful and nice she was, and I don't mean to say anything bad about my half-sister. She was often snide, but nobody dares talk about it. Because she's dead. I can't understand how Halvor could bear it. Annie was the one who decided on everything."
"Is that right?"
"But she was nice to me. She was always nice." For a moment she looked stricken at the memory of her sister and everything that had happened.
"How long have you and Magne been together?" he asked.
"Only a few weeks. We go to the movies and stuff like that." Her reply was a little too quick.
"He's younger than you, isn't he?"
"Four years," she said reluctantly. "But he's very mature for his age."
"I see."
She held something up to the light and squinted at it. A