Portraits revealed through your current reading position.
Katia's ex-partner and fellow professor, who destroyed her adoption bid by disclosing her cancer to the agency.
Fannar was a professor and Katia's partner before the collapse. He had an affair with a student; Katia reported him and nothing was done. In the memory Carl witnesses, Fannar appears at the door of the Icelandic children's hospital just as Katia arrives with her adoption paperwork.
Asked what he is doing there, he says only "Telling them the truth," and pushes past her. The truth in question is the brain cancer Katia was hiding, and it ends her application to adopt baby Annie. Both the memory ghost and the present Katia shout "He had no right!" as the caseworker explains there is nothing she can do.
An older, balding man, dressed for business, moving with brisk indifference as he pushes past Katia in a hospital doorway.
The man whose disclosure cost Katia the child she wanted, and the second worst moment of her life.
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings: