What was she thinking?

Then she hurried after them.

After the second attempt he threatened to kill her children, and she did not try to run away after that. That time she was better prepared. She imagined that she could start a new life. Move north with the children to a fishing town, rent a room or small flat, work in a fish factory and make sure that they wanted for nothing. On the second attempt she took time to plan everything. She decided to move to Siglufjordur to begin with. There were plenty of jobs to be had now that the worst years of the depression were over, outsiders flocked there to work and she could keep a low profile alone with two children. She could spend a while in the workers’ dormitory before finding a room of her own.

The bus journey for her and the children did not come cheap and her husband kept a tight hold on every penny he earned at the harbour. Over a long time she had managed to scrape together a few coins until she had enough for the fare. She took all the children’s clothes that she could fit into a small suitcase, a handful of personal belongings and the pushchair, which could still carry Mikkelina after she mended it. She hurried down to the bus station, looking everywhere in terror as if she expected to meet him on the next street corner.

He went home at lunchtime as usual and immediately realised that she had left him. She knew she was supposed to have lunch ready when he came home and had never allowed herself not to. He saw that the pushchair was missing. The wardrobe was open. Remembering her previous attempt, he marched straight to the Salvation Army and made a scene when he was told she was not there. He didn’t believe them, and ran all over the building, into the rooms and the basement, and when he could not find them he attacked the Salvation Army captain who ran the shelter, knocked him to the ground and threatened to kill him if he did not say where they were.

When eventually he realised that she had not gone to the Salvation Army after all, he prowled the town without catching sight of her. He stormed into shops and restaurants, but she was nowhere to be seen. His rage and desperation intensified as the day wore on and he went home out of his mind with fury. He turned the basement flat upside down in search of hints as to where she might have gone, then ran to two of her old friends from the time she worked for the merchant, barged his way in and called out to her and the children, then ran back out without a word and disappeared.

She arrived in Siglufjordur at two o’clock in the morning after travelling almost non-stop all day. The coach had made three stops to allow the passengers to stretch their legs, eat their packed lunches or buy a meal. She had taken sandwiches and bottles of milk, but they were hungry again when the bus drew into Haganesvik in Fljot, where a boat was waiting to ferry the passengers to Siglufjordur, in the cold of night. After she found the workers’ dormitory, the foreman showed her into a little room with a single bed and lent her a mattress to spread on the floor, with two blankets, and they spent their first night of freedom there. The children fell asleep the moment they touched the mattress, but she lay in bed staring out into the darkness and, unable to control the trembling that passed through her whole body, she broke down and wept.

He found her a few days later. One possibility that occurred to him was that she had left the city, perhaps by bus, so he went down to the station, asked around and found out that his wife and children had taken the northbound bus to Siglufjordur. He spoke to the driver who remembered the woman and children clearly, especially the disabled girl. He caught the next coach north and was in Siglufjordur just after midnight. Threading his way from one dormitory to the next, he eventually found her asleep in her little room, shown the way by a foreman he had woken up. He explained matters to the foreman. She had gone to the village ahead of him, he said, but they probably would not be staying very long.

He crept into the room. A dull glow entered from the street through a small window and he stepped over the children on the mattress, bent over her until their faces almost touched, and shook her. She was fast asleep and he shook her again, more roughly, until she opened her eyes, and he smiled when he saw the genuine terror in her eyes. She was about to scream for help, but he put his hand over her mouth.

“Did you seriously think you’d manage it?” he whispered threateningly.

She stared up at him.

“Did you seriously think it’d be that easy?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Do you know what I really want to do now?” he hissed between his clenched teeth. “I want to take that girl up the mountainside and kill her, and bury her where no one will ever find her, and say the poor bugger must have crawled into the sea. And you know what? That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll do it this minute. If there’s as much as a squeak from the boy I’ll kill him too. Say he crawled into the sea after her.”

She gave a low whimper when she darted a look at the children, and he smiled. He took his hand from her mouth.

“I’ll never do it again,” she groaned. “Never. I’ll never do it again. Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry. I’m crazy. I know. I’m crazy. Don’t let the children pay for it. Hit me. Hit me. As hard as you can. Hit me as hard as you can. We can leave if you want.”

Her desperation repulsed him.

“No, no,” he said. “This is what you want. So let’s just have it your way.”

He made as if to reach out for Mikkelina who was sleeping by Simon’s side, but the girl’s mother grabbed his hand, frightened out of her wits.

“Look,” she said, hitting herself in the face. “Look.” She tugged at her hair. “Look.” She sat up and threw herself back against the cast-iron head of the bed, and whether she meant to or not she knocked herself out cold and slumped before him, unconscious.

They started back early the next morning. She had been working at the fish factory for a few days and he went with her to collect her wages. By working in the salting yard she could keep an eye on her children, who played nearby or stayed in the room. He explained to the foreman that they were going back to Reykjavik. They had received news that altered their plans and she had some pay owing to her. The foreman scribbled on a piece of paper and pointed to the office. He looked at her as he handed her the paper. She seemed poised to say something. He mistook her fear for shyness.

“Are you all right?” the foreman asked.

“She’s fine,” her husband said and strutted away with her.

When they returned to their basement flat in Reykjavik he did not touch her. She stood in the living room wearing her shabby coat and holding the suitcase in her hand, expecting the thrashing of a lifetime, but nothing happened. The blow she had dealt herself had caught him unawares. Instead of going to fetch help he tried to nurse her and bring her round, the first act of care he had shown her since they were married. When she came round he said she had to understand that she could never leave him. He would sooner kill her and the children. She was his wife and always would be.

Always.

She never tried to run away after that.

The years went by. His plans to become a fisherman came to nothing after only three trips. He suffered from severe sea sickness that he could not shake off. On top of that, he found he was afraid of the sea, and never overcame that either. He was scared that the boat would sink. Scared of falling overboard. Scared of bad weather. On his last trip a storm struck and, convinced that the boat would capsize, he sat crying in the mess, thinking his days were numbered. After that, he never went to sea again.

He seemed incapable of showing tenderness towards her. At best he treated her with total indifference. For the first two years of their marriage he seemed to regret having hit her or having cursed her so foully that she burst into tears. But as time went by he stopped showing any sign of guilt, as if what he did to her had ceased to be unnatural or a disfiguration of their relationship, and had become something necessary and right. It sometimes occurred to her, which perhaps he too knew deep down inside, that the violence he inflicted on her was above all a manifestation of his own weakness. That the more he hit her, the more wretched he himself became. He blamed her for it. Screamed that it was her fault that he treated her as he did. She was the one who made him do it.