Spring kept making fleeting appearances only to vanish again almost immediately, the brief thaws merely serving to kindle false hopes and remind people what they were missing. Thóra shivered as she stood down by the harbour, waiting to meet a representative of the bank’s resolution committee and look around the yacht. Her thin summer coat provided little protection against the north wind, which succeeded now and then, with admirable persistence, in whipping up drops of moisture from the sea, leaving an unpleasant tang of salt on her lips. ‘Oh, why haven’t I been to the hairdresser?’ Thóra’s hair, unusually long for her, kept whipping over her face and plastering itself against the lip-gloss which she now regretted having applied before she got out of the car. ‘How should I know?’ Bella was coping better with the gale than Thóra. No doubt her khaki army jacket was made of thicker fabric than her boss’s coat, and the bulging pockets must have provided good ballast. And her hair was so short that she probably couldn’t mess it up if she tried, even with her hands.
