She smiled. So did Julia.

“So in all that time, you never…?”

“No, no, no. We exchanged books. Until he died a few years later. Something to do with his heart. His siblings put the apartment up for sale, but his furniture was still there at the viewing. So I went along, pretending to be interested in buying it. I walked around in his home, ran my hands over his kitchen counter, the hangers in his closet. In the end I found myself standing in front of his bookcase. It’s such an odd thing, the way you can know someone so perfectly through what they read. We liked the same voices, in the same way. So I let myself have a few minutes to think about what we could have been for each other, if everything had been different, somewhere else in our lives.”

“And then?” Julia whispered.

Estelle smiled. Defiantly. Happily.

“Then I went home. But I kept the key to his apartment. I never told Knut. It was my affair.”

* * *

Silence settled in the closet for a while. In the end Anna-Lena plucked up the courage to say: “I’ve never had an affair. But once I changed hairdressers, and I didn’t dare walk past the old one for several years.”

It wasn’t the strongest anecdote, but she wanted to feel that she was participating. She had never had time for an affair, how on earth does anyone find the time? All that stress, Anna-Lena thought, and a whole new man to deal with. She had spent her life working and rushing home, working and rushing home, and always felt guilty for not being good enough in either place. In those circumstances it’s easy to feel sympathy for other people who aren’t quite good enough. That’s probably why, out of all the people in the apartment who had already had the thought, it was Anna-Lena who was the first to say out loud: “I think we should try to help the bank robber.”

Julia looked up, and their eyes met with a whole new sense of respect.

“Yes, so do I! I was just thinking that. I don’t think any of this was the intention,” Julia nodded.

“I just don’t know how we could go about helping her,” Anna-Lena admitted.

“No, the police must have the building surrounded, so I don’t think there’s any way she can escape, sadly,” Julia sighed.

Estelle drank more wine. She turned the packet of cigarettes over in her hand, because of course you’re not allowed to smoke in front of pregnant women, you really aren’t, at least not until you’re so drunk that you can claim with a clear conscience that you were too drunk to notice that there was one nearby.

“Maybe she could just wear a disguise?” she suddenly said, with just a hint of a slur on the s in “disguise.”

Julia shook her head uncomprehendingly.

“What? Who could wear a disguise?”

“The bank robber,” Estelle said, taking another swig.

“What sort of disguise?”

Estelle shrugged.

“The real estate agent.”

“The real estate agent?”

Estelle nodded.

“Have you seen any sign of a real estate agent in this apartment since the bank robber arrived?”

“No… no, now that you come to mention it…”

Estelle drank more wine, then nodded again.

“I’m fairly certain that all the police outside will take it for granted that there’s a real estate agent present at an apartment viewing. So if…”

Julia stared at her. Then started to laugh.

“So if the bank robber pretends to give herself up and let all the hostages go, she can pretend to be the real estate agent and walk out with the rest of us! Estelle, you’re a genius!”

“Thanks,” Estelle said, and peered down into the bottle with one eye closed to see how much was left before she could start smoking.

Julia struggled to her feet as quickly as she could and hurried over to the door to call to Ro and explain the new plan, but just as she was about to open the door there was a knock on it. Not hard, but hard enough to make the three women jump as if a load of puppies and sparklers had been thrown into the closet. Julia opened the door a crack. The rabbit was standing outside looking awkward, insofar as it was possible to tell.

“Sorry, I don’t want to disturb you. But I’ve been told to put some pants on.”

“Your pants are in here?” Julia wondered.

The rabbit scratched his neck.

“No, I had them in the bathroom, before the viewing started. But I washed my hands and managed to splash water on them, then I saw the scented candles on the washbasin, and thought I might be able to dry my pants by warming them up. And then… well… I managed to set my pants on fire. So then I had to pour even more water over them to put the flames out. So my pants ended up soaking wet. And then the viewing started and I heard you all out in the apartment, and then the bank robber started shouting, and there wasn’t really time… well, to cut a long story short, my pants are still wet. So I was thinking…”

The rabbit’s head swayed in the direction of the suits hanging in the closet, which he was hoping he might be able to borrow instead. His ears accidentally hit Julia’s forehead and she backed away, but the rabbit evidently interpreted this as an invitation to step inside.

“Yes, well, come in, why don’t you…,” Julia grunted.

The rabbit looked around with interest.

“Isn’t this lovely!” he said.

Anna-Lena disappeared beneath the suits and wiped her eyes. Estelle lit a cigarette, because she didn’t think it mattered anymore, and when Anna-Lena aimed a disapproving glance in her direction Estelle said defensively: “Oh, it’ll blow out through the air vent!”

The rabbit tilted his head slightly, then he asked: “What air vent?”

Estelle coughed, it was unclear if that was because of the cigarette or the question: “I mean… there seems to be some sort of ventilation in here, but it was only a guess. There’s a breeze from up in the ceiling, though!”

“What are you talking about?” Julia asked.

Estelle coughed again. Then she stopped coughing. But there was still someone coughing, up in the ceiling.

* * *

They stared at each other, the rabbit and the three women, a diverse group of individuals, to put it mildly, huddled inside a closet at an apartment viewing that had been disrupted by the arrival of a bank robber. Stranger things had probably happened to people in the town, but not much stranger. Estelle had time to think that if Knut had opened the closet door just then he would have laughed out loud, there would have been breakfast everywhere, and she would have loved that. The coughing up in the ceiling continued, like when you try to stifle it and it just gets worse. A cinema cough.

Julia dragged the stepladder to the back of the closet, Estelle got off the chest, Anna-Lena helped the rabbit up. He pressed his hands against the ceiling until it gave way. There was a hatch, and above it a very cramped little space.

* * *

And there sat the real estate agent.

59

In the police station Jack has nearly lost his voice with rage by this point.

“Tell the truth! Why did you ask for fireworks? Where’s the real real estate agent? Is there even a real real estate agent?”