Sonny and Martha leave Norway

Sonny and Martha leave Norway together after Sonny survives the final confrontation and reaches Martha at the ferry landing. Their departure turns an escape from immediate danger into the beginning of a life they will have to build elsewhere: Martha has made the arrangements, Sonny arrives shaken but alive, and the two leave with no detailed plan beyond the road before them.

Arrangements and Waiting

Simon had asked his lawyer to organise transport and payment for an eye operation at the Howell Clinic in Baltimore. The lawyer also reported that a woman had brought a red sports bag containing a considerable amount of cash to the office. Simon treated the request and the money as protected by attorney–client privilege, declining to give the police grounds to pursue them. This exchange connects the escape to the practical arrangements for Else’s treatment, while keeping the identity of the person who delivered the bag unstated in the scene.

Martha, meanwhile, waits by the ferry from Oslo to Nesodden, where she expects to find Sonny. She has no backup plan: she has chosen to wait for him, despite the possibility that he may not appear. The first passenger in a pale grey suit is not Sonny, and her brief hope falls away; then another man in a grey suit steps off the ferry. The sequence makes the reunion hinge on recognition and uncertainty rather than any assurance that the escape has succeeded.

Reunion at Nesodden

Martha recognizes Sonny when he appears, moving as if he has taken in water and is unsteady. She dries her tears, straightens her headscarf, and waves; he waves back. He is pale and red-eyed, and when he gets into the car he embraces her. The trembling comes from him, making clear that the apparent relief of reaching her does not erase the strain of what has just happened.

Martha asks how it went. Sonny answers that everything went fine but does not offer an account of the events. They sit together in silence, holding on to one another, and she chooses not to press him with questions yet. Her whispered question about what comes next receives a practical answer: the journey is beginning, and the suitcase in the back seat is large. The scene moves from the question of whether Sonny has made it out alive to the less certain question of how the two will continue.

Setting Out

Martha says that the suitcase contains only the bare essentials, puts a CD into the player, and hands Sonny the mobile phone so he can read the route. Their roles are divided simply: she will drive the first stretch, and he will navigate. The phone estimates a distance of 1,030 kilometres and a driving time of twelve hours and fifty-one minutes. Those precise figures give the departure a material scale: they are not merely reunited but committed to a long journey together.

The novel ends this action on preparation rather than arrival. The car, the suitcase, the phone, and the stated route establish movement away from Norway without specifying their destination or what awaits them. Sonny and Martha leave with the immediate danger behind them, but the narrative does not present their future as settled; their shared departure is a beginning, not a guarantee.

Narrative Significance

The reunion reverses Martha’s fear that Sonny may never come back: the expected meeting first seems to fail, then becomes real when he steps off the ferry. His arrival makes their bond visible through gesture rather than explanation, while their silence acknowledges that the ordeal is too recent to be recounted at once. The final practical exchange—who drives, who reads the map, and how far they must travel—places their hope in action and mutual reliance.

The escape also gathers together two strands of the ending. Simon’s arrangements for payment and transport toward Else’s operation show that Sonny’s departure exists within a wider chain of aid, while Martha’s wait and the cash-bearing bag indicate the material support behind a plan whose details remain undisclosed. The last image is therefore neither a return to safety nor a completed rescue: it is two people setting out, together, with a long road ahead.