The next moment she was inside and in his arms. Then, at last, she heard footsteps behind the door and heaved a sigh of relief. They gave nothing away, just returned reflections of bare black apple trees, grey sky and milky-white terrain. Feeling her desperation mount, she glanced at the windows of the neighbouring houses. She heard the buzz of the doorbell inside, like a bumblebee in a jam jar. Not that late-night visits would seem any more innocent, but for some reason acts of this kind felt more appropriate when performed after the fall of darkness. She went without waiting for a response, slithered in her slippery shoes up to the door she had been through so many times, but never like this, not in the middle of the day, in full view of all the neighbours’ prying eyes. I’ll leave the key in the ignition so you can listen to the radio.’ ‘Just someone I know,’ Sara said, automatically checking her hair in the mirror. ‘Who lives here?’ came from the back seat. In front of the garage there was a large patch of black tarmac amid all the white, and she realised that the removal van had been there. In the rear-view mirror she saw her son’s disgruntled face. The car skidded as she applied the brakes, and she heard a groan from the back seat. So different that she almost passed his drive. She was thinking that the houses looked different in daylight. At two, the snowploughs were in action in Lillestrøm, and when, at half past two, Sara Kvinesland slowly and carefully steered her Toyota Corolla SR5 between the detached houses in Kolloveien, the November snow was lying like a down duvet over the rolling countryside. At eleven o’clock in the morning, large flakes appeared from a colourless sky and invaded the fields, gardens and lawns of Romerike like an armada from outer space.

(English translation © Don Bartlett 2010)

The snowman book jo nesbo