Suddenly she regretted having slunk over here on her own. Instead of feeling good about her solitude, she was overwhelmed by an odd sensation of discomfort. It was unlike her; she was known to have anything but a fertile imagination, and usually stared blankly at whoever had told the joke while others roared with laughter. It’s not like there was even a chance that she would get the joke later; generally speaking, anything other than pure fact went over her head. This had worked to her advantage in geology, but it was a hindrance when it came to human interaction.

She yawned and shook off her uneasiness. Before shutting her laptop she checked whether her husband Stebbi was on MSN chat, but of course he’d long since gone to bed. The time difference made it midnight for him, and he was supposed to start work at Ártúnshofði at 8 a.m. The morning traffic meant he had to give himself plenty of time to make it all the way from Hafnarfjörður, where they’d bought their first apartment. It was this investment in real estate that had forced her to accept this difficult job, which paid much better than comparable positions in town – partly thanks to the extra allowance included to offset the long absences from her family. They had waited too long to buy, deciding to do so only after the prices had been driven sky-high, and now they had their hands full trying to pay it off. Fortunately they hadn’t taken a loan in foreign currency for the purchase, as so many who now bore the consequences of the falling rate of the Icelandic króna had done, but the payments had increased nevertheless and they were eating into their income.