fifty-eight days
Right. The website gets a job.
I'm in Tromsø until the first of February, to finish translating a novel called Mørketid. That's the Norwegian word for the polar night, the weeks when the sun doesn't come up here at all. The book is 612 pages long and set in this town, and I thought I should see the dark it's about before I put it into English.
So. The sun goes under on Tuesday and comes back on the 21st of January. Fifty-eight days from today. I'm going to count them down here, for my mum in Aberdeen, who thinks I've lost my mind, and for nobody else.
The flat is the top half of a yellow wooden house on the hill above the centre. Its own door, up an outside staircase. Fourteen steps, the ninth one creaks. Two rooms, a kitchen with a cupboard above the fridge that you need a chair for, with someone's pencil scribbles on the inside of the door. A big table at the back window, facing the water.
I landed at three. It was already dark.