She can’t hear you, she hasn’t been able to hear you for a while now, all the promises and all the forgivings in the world are pointless if she can’t hear you. Her head leans against your head. You still have her taste on your lips, as if with her kiss she had passed part of herself to you. You stroke her cheek, feel her neck for a pulse. You don’t shake her, even though everything within you cries out to shake her and bring her back to life, you let her go.

Enough’s enough.

You lay her head back gently, take your jacket off, and cover her up with it. The sun has reached her hands now, they look bare and unprotected. You can’t stand up yet. You take her hands in yours and protect them. Her eyes are open a crack, she looks down at the fjord, and that’s how you’re going to leave her.

At peace with herself, in a place that now belongs to her alone.

You let go of her hands, stand up, and kiss her on the forehead before you leave.

They’re waiting outside the hotel.

“Girl, what took you so long?” asks Stink.

“Imagine if Darian had come back,” Schnappi whines, then she sees your face, frowns, and wants to know what’s happened.

“Nothing, I didn’t find her.”

“You’ve been in that dump for an hour and you didn’t find her?”

“Stink, the hotel is big.”

“So’s my ass, if I’m lying. And where’s your jacket?”

Stink shuts up, Schnappi says quietly, “And why do you have blood on your hand?”

You look at your hand with surprise, you’re really a rotten liar. Without giving your girls an answer, you walk past them. They don’t follow you. After a few steps you turn around.

“Are you coming now or are you not?”

“And Taja?”

Stink sounds as if she’s about to burst into tears.

“Taja’s okay,” you say and swallow the tears down and summon all your courage and go on talking: “Taja doesn’t want to come. She’s up to her eyeballs in guilt, and I’m to tell you that she loves you, and you’re to know that she never wanted to be fake, but it’s happened and she regrets it and hopes you can forgive her, but you don’t have to, because as I’ve said, she has to forgive herself, that’s all that’s important.”

“What … what are you saying?” stammers Schnappi, and when Schnappi stammers it means there’s a good chance the world’s about to end. She looks back at the hotel, she looks at you almost pleadingly.

“Nessi, what happened in there?”

“Nothing. I want you girls to turn around, okay? We’re going, and if we don’t go now I’m going to get hysterical and scream so loud they’ll hear me in Berlin. Please, let’s get going.”

They’ve never seen you like this, you don’t know yourself, you stand there and wait, you want to be you again, soft and tender and not hard and resolute. At last your girls get moving.

“Relax,” says Schnappi and takes your hand.

“We’re coming,” says Stink and takes your other hand.

The way down the winding road to the car is a sluggish dream in reverse. You can’t feel your footsteps. Sometimes Stink says something, sometimes Schnappi does, you keep quiet and try not to think, not to feel. You get into the car, the doors close, you take a deep breath and start the engine and then you just sit there without putting the car in gear, hands on the steering wheel and leaning slightly forward as if waiting for a signal to go. Schnappi asks if everything’s all right, and you almost burst out laughing, because everything’s never going to be all right ever again, but you don’t tell your girls that, you just turn to Stink and ask for the phone. She hands it to you and you take your hands off the wheel and keep the promise you made to Taja.