Carla smiled, despite herself.

‘Liked that one, did you?’ Erik lifted his glass in her direction. ‘For once, it’s something I just made up. Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ She barely sipped at her own neat vodka. It had taken her the whole news report to get three fingers down the drink, and now it was warm.

‘Dad, why do you stay here? Why don’t you go back to Tromso?’

‘And meet your mother in the high street every day? No thanks. I’m living with enough guilt as it is.’

‘She isn’t there most of the time and you know it.’

‘Okay, I’d just see her every time she comes back from some particularly successful book launch or lecture tour.’ Erik shook his head. ‘I don’t think my ego’s up to that. Besides, after all these years, who would I know?’

‘Alright, you could move to Oslo. Write a column back there.’

‘Carla, I already do.’ Erik gestured at the battered computer in the corner. ‘See that. It’s got a wire in the back that goes all the way to Norway. Marvellous what they can do with technology these days.’

‘Oh, shut up.’

‘Carla.’ The mockery drained from his tone. ‘What am I going to change, moving back there now? It isn’t as if the costs are prohibitive here. Even with the zone tax on top, email is so cheap you can’t realistically cost it on the number of articles I mail out in a month. And even if you could, even if I was walking my work to the editors in Oslo to save money, I’d spend what I saved on winter socks.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, it’s not that cold.’

‘I think you’re forgetting.’

‘Dad.’ Her voice grew very gentle. ‘We were there in January.’

‘Oh.’ She heard, in that single gruff syllable, how much it hurt him. He made a point of looking her in the face. ‘Visiting your mother?’

She shook her head. ‘There wasn’t time, and anyway, I think she was in New Zealand. Chris took me to the Winter Wheels show in Stockholm, and we went across to see Sognefjord on the way back. He’d never been there.’

‘And it wasn’t cold? Come on, Carla. I may not be able to afford flights on a whim, but it hasn’t been so long.’

‘Alright, it was cold. Yes, it was cold. But, Dad, it was so—‘ She gave up and gestured around her. ‘Dad, look at this place.’

‘Yeah, I know I haven’t tidied up for a while, but—‘

‘You know what I mean!’

Erik looked at her in silence for a while. Then he went to the window and tugged back one of the ragged curtains. Outside, something had been set on fire and it painted leaping shadows on the ceiling above where he stood. Shouts came through the thin glass pane. ‘Yes,’ he said softly. ‘I know what you mean. You mean this. Urban decay, as only the British know how to do it. And here I am, fifty-seven years old and stuck in the middle of it.’

She avoided his eyes.

‘It’s just so civilised back there, Dad. There’s nobody sleeping on the streets—‘

‘Just as well, they’d freeze to death.’

She ignored him. ‘—nobody dying because they can’t afford medical attention, no old people too poor to afford heating and too scared to go out after dark. Dad, there are no gang zones, no armoured police trucks, there’s no exclusion like there is here.’

‘It sounds as if you should be talking to Chris, not me.’ Erik knocked back a large portion of his drink in one. It was an angry gesture, and his voice carried the ragged echo of the emotion. ‘Maybe you can persuade him to move up there if you like it so much. Though it’s hard to see what you’d both do for a living without anybody to kill on the roads.’

She flinched.

He saw it and reined himself in.

‘Carla—‘

She looked at her lap. Said nothing. He sighed.

‘Carla, I’m sorry. I. I  didn’t mean to say that.’

‘Yes, you did.’

‘No.’ He set down his drink and came to crouch in front of her. ‘No, I didn’t, Carla. I know you’re just doing what you have to get by. We all are. Even Chris. I know that. But can’t you see. Any argument for me going back to Norway is an equally valid argument for you. How do you think I feel, looking at you, stuck in the middle of this?’

The thought stopped her like a slap. Her hands tightened on his.

‘Dad—‘ She swallowed and started again. ‘Dad, that’s not it, is it? You’re not staying because of me?’

He chuckled and lifted her chin with one hand.

‘Staying because of you? Staying to protect you, with all the money and influence I’ve amassed? Yeah, that’s right.’

‘Then tell me why.’

‘Why.’ He stood up and for a moment she thought she was in for another lecture. Instead, he went to stand at the window again, staring out. The flames were stronger now and they stained his face with orange. ‘Do you remember Monica Hansen?’

‘Your photographer?’

Erik smiled. ‘I’m not sure she’d like the possessive pronoun, but yes, Monica the photographer. She’s back in Oslo now, taking photos of furniture for some catalogue. She’s bored, Carla. The money’s okay, but she’s bored to screaming.’

‘Better bored than sleeping in the streets.’

‘Don’t exaggerate, Carla. I’m not sleeping in the streets. And, no, listen to me a moment, think about it. You said yourself there’s no exclusion there like there is here. So what would I write about. Back in the comfort and safety of my own Scandinavian social system? No, Carla. This is the front line - this is where I can make a difference.’

‘No one wants you to make a difference, Dad.’ She got up from the chair, suddenly angry again, and faced him. She jerked back the other curtain and glared angrily down at the fire below. ‘Look at that.’

The source of the flames, she saw as she gestured, was an overturned armchair. Other items lay scattered around, unrecognisable in the darkness and as yet untorched. A shattered window directly above suggested an origin. Someone had been in one of the first-floor flats, throwing down what it contained. Now figures in baggy, hooded sportswear stood gathered around the fire, making Carla think of menacing negative-image Disney dwarves out of some nightmare where it all definitely did not end happily ever after.

‘Look at it,’ she hissed again. ‘You think those people care what you write? You think most of them can even read? You think people like that care about you making a difference?’

‘Don’t be so quick to judge, Carla. Like Benito says, don’t make 3D judgments of what you can only see on your TV screen.’

‘Oh, for—‘ Her expletives evaporated in an exasperation too old and deep for words. She rapped hard on the glass. ‘This isn’t a TV, Dad. It’s a fucking window, and you live here. You tell me what we’re looking at, community night barbecue maybe?’

Erik sighed. ‘No, it’s probably gang retribution for something. Someone they thought informed on them, someone who spoke out of turn. They did the same thing to Mrs McKenny last summer because she wouldn’t let her son run balloons for them. Of course, then he had to, just to buy some new furniture. You can’t fault the gangwits on psychology.’ He turned away from the window, and suddenly, in the motion, she saw how tired he had become. The vision only fanned the flames of her anger again. Up from the pit of her stomach, a licking, gusting sickness.

Erik appeared not to sense it coming. He was freshening his drink again, working on an ironic grin to match it. ‘Of course, it could just be kids having fun. Random stuff. A lot of those first-floor flats have been empty for longer than I’ve been here. They just break in and—‘

He shrugged and drank.

‘And throw the stuff out the window!’ Suddenly she was yelling at him, really yelling. ‘And set fire to it! For fun! Jesus fucking Christ, Dad, will you listen to yourself. You think this is normal? Are you fucked in the head?’

The flashback caught like magnesium ribbon behind her eyes. Eleven years old again, and screaming at her father as he tried to explain what he had done and why she had to choose. It burned out as fast, afterimage inked onto her retina and the returning dimness of the room. She looked up quickly, caught the expression on Erik’s face, and knew he was remembering too.