It was an alien feeling; she was never angry, only despondent. She’d fetched her handbag from the dining table, opened it and turned it upside down so that the money fluttered out. Most of it was in hundred-kroner notes, a few fifties and a clutch of thousands. She counted on and on, unable to believe her own eyes. More than sixty thousand kroner! Pocket money, Maja had said. She arranged it in tidy piles and shook her head. She could live for an eternity on sixty thousand, six months at least. And no one would miss it. Nobody even knew it existed. Where would it have gone otherwise, she thought, to the state? Eva had the strange feeling that she deserved it. That it was hers. She gathered up the piles, found a rubber band and bound them up neatly. It no longer troubled her that she’d taken the money. It ought to have troubled her, she couldn’t quite understand why it didn’t, she’d never stolen anything in her life before, apart from Mrs Skollenborg’s plums. But why should it just lie there, in bowls and vases, when she needed it so badly?
