After you’ve left the sleeping girls on their own, you look up the cliff, all you can see is rocks, occasional bushes, but no hotel. You follow the road, reach the summit, and don’t believe your eyes. Where the girls will see decay and chaos two hours later, you see something completely different.

What is that?

It reminds you of a beach hotel that you saw in Montenegro years ago. The house could be from colonial times, it doesn’t fit here at all. Now you can understand why the man with the greyhound laughed a little while ago. Who would take the trouble of climbing up this cliff to see a wreck like this?

The rooms are dilapidated, cracks in the ceiling, holes in the walls, the floors covered with rubbish. But you can see that they’re good floors. Floorboards that have defied the elements and not warped. The entrance hall is tiled and supported by four pillars; a wide staircase leads upward, the banisters are missing in several places, and it looks as if the steps would give way under the slightest weight. You’re careful and climb up to the first floor. Empty rooms, in the bathroom even the toilets and fittings have been torn out. You run your hand over the wallpaper as if looking for a pulse. On the second floor you throw back your head and look up into the sky. The roof has been torn away completely, the rafters revealed, the withered branches of a fir dangle in and remind you of the Christmas trees that lie sadly by the edge of the road at the beginning of January.

On the way down you imagine how many guests have walked up and down the stairs here. What they felt, what they thought. Every house has its own soul. The hotel’s soul hasn’t fled. It is still breathing, and lives hidden in the walls. Even though you haven’t yet found the pulse, you know it’s there.

Back on the first floor, you find a closed door at the end of the corridor. It’s jammed, the wood must have warped. You slam your shoulder against it and the door swings open.

The kitchen is massive and almost undamaged. A table with chairs, broken glass and stones on the floor, a kitten calendar from 1997. In the sink there’s the skeleton of a dead pigeon that must have flown in through the window and been too stupid to find its way out again. An old station clock hangs on the wall, the minute hand missing. Who would steal a minute hand? you wonder and open the cupboards. Plates. Cups. Glasses. You find cans whose use-by date ran out ten years ago. The kitchen is a time capsule. You go to the door and close it again, the capsule is sealed, the present only comes in through the broken windows and breathes in your face. You sit down and lay your hands flat on the tabletop. Dust and dirt don’t bother you. You’re quite still and listen to the house and wait for the pulse.

It feels like minutes, but you’ve been sitting here for over two hours, and you’d probably hold out for even longer if you didn’t hear the voices.

They’ve found the house, you think and don’t move.

It’s like a radio play. You hear the girls arguing. Then it falls silent. A man speaks. Sharply, furiously. You like the sound. You can make out every word, and slowly, very slowly, you work out the connections.

My son’s murderer is standing outside.

You don’t move. The girl Taja confesses. And you hear and don’t move, both hands on the tabletop, eyes on the closed door. Patient.

You can imagine staying here forever. You would start on the first floor and breathe life into the hotel, one step at a time. Clear away the dirt, cover the roof, entice past glories from the ruin. When you were on the second floor, you stepped out onto the terrace. In front of you was the fjord, below you there were rocks.

Not even the end of civilization could be more beautiful.

A place to stay.

The shots make you flinch. No shouts, nothing. Just three sharp shots and then silence. You go on waiting. Hands on the tabletop, silent. You look at the door and the door flies open and the girls are standing in the doorway. The door bangs against the wall, swings back, the delicate Asian girl holds it open with one hand. They look at you in alarm. You say, “Just come in.”

They don’t move. They expected anything, but not you. The red-haired girl frowns and says, “Deselected?”

You look at your chest, look back at the girls.

“My son lent me the T-shirt. He thought I’d never wear it, he was wrong. Sit down.”

The Asian girl shakes her head. It’s the last thing she wants to do. You’re going to have to be a bit more persuasive. Tell them the truth, give them the feeling they’ve arrived.

“You’ll be safe here.”

No reaction; they probably don’t think much of the safety promised them by a stranger who’s sitting in a dilapidated house, wearing a stupid T-shirt.

“Which one of you is Taja?”

At last they react and look at each other and turn around. The girl with the golden hair says, “Where’s Taja?”