He crossed the room, straight towards me. My mother made a move as if to protect me. I don’t think he even noticed. He was only looking at me, with a terrible stare that I still see every night. He blamed me, without a doubt. He stopped and held out the Bible without a word. I put it quickly in my bag. He turned to the mediator and asked how much we were claiming in compensation. He listened to the figure and took a chequebook from his pocket, opening it out on the desk. The mediator started to say that he could of course make a counter-offer, but he held up his hand to stop her, as if he didn’t want to hear another word about the matter. He wrote out three cheques: one to me for the total amount we’d claimed, and another two for the mediator’s and my lawyer’s fees. I signed a document stating that the claim was settled. He picked up his copy, turned round without looking at anyone and left. The whole thing took under ten minutes. The mediator could hardly believe it; it was the first time a case had ever ended like this.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then…I went home, took the Bible from my bag and put it on the shelf above my desk, with my university course books. It was a Bible my father no longer used and it was months since I’d lent it to Kloster: I’d forgotten all about it. In fact, when I thought about the meeting again, it occurred to me that it had been an excuse to come up close and stare at me in that way. I couldn’t get that out of my head and I had nightmares for days afterwards. I dreamed that Kloster’s little girl was taking my hand, wanting me to come and play with her, and saying, just as she had when she was alive, that she didn’t want to be on her own in the room next door any more.

“I opened a bank account and paid in the cheque, but the days passed and I couldn’t bring myself to touch the money. For a time I thought of donating it to charity, but I had a superstitious fear of doing anything with it, even to give it away, as if like that I’d be able to keep things from moving on.