‘Yes, of course,’ Selma said, smiling: she hoped the darkness would prevent her neighbour from seeing that she was bluffing. ‘It’s to go for a service. Needs a complete overhaul every year, you know.’

‘So late? It’s nearly midnight. And wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until spring?’

The man smiled as he came closer. He lived in the house to the north-east. Notoriously argumentative, but of the kind who prefaced every criticism with a broad smile. Nasty comments presented as jokes. Protests as apparently pleasant, incontestable suggestions.

Selma grew increasingly relieved not to live here any longer.

‘Of course not now,’ Selma said, as she exited the garage. ‘Early tomorrow morning. Just wanted to check that everything was OK.’

She closed the door without too much exertion.

‘Good night, then,’ she said pleasantly and set off towards the driveway.

‘Have you been away somewhere?’ he virtually shouted after her. ‘I’ve not seen you for a while! By the way, I read in the newspaper that you had sold …’

Selma did not reply, but simply picked up speed.

Without really doing so.

She was walking with tiny steps, but extremely fast, to create the illusion that she was in a hurry. It worked. She had barely gone more than six or seven metres up the driveway before the man and his dog disappeared.

She stopped. Waited for a minute or two. She was about to go back down again when she noticed another set of footprints in the frozen slush on the new asphalt they had laid last year.

There was nothing strange at all about footsteps leading up to the house. They could belong to Jesso. Or Johannes. Since the footsteps did not go back down again, they must necessarily belong to someone who was still in the house, she concluded, and almost calmed down at that thought.

But not entirely.

There was something familiar about the footprints.

The pattern was distinctive, and the frozen slush sufficiently deep to see very clearly the impression of the steel rod across the sole.

Ski fastenings.

Someone had walked here in ski boots.

Recognizing the model, Selma was able to confirm it as soon as she had compared it with the photos she had taken in Jan Morell’s garden. They seemed identical. She carefully dangled her keys beside the clearest footprint.

Snap, said her iPhone, and Selma could understand precious little.

She tucked her mobile into her bag and continued on up. Fairly slowly and close to the cedar hedge, towards the swimming pool area. It was so high and dense that the house did not become visible until the driveway ended in a large, paved courtyard. The garage was right in front of her, the entrance to the house on the left-hand side. Even at a distance of so many metres, she could see that Jesso had changed the nameplate. The plastic-laminated, faded drawing of the whole family that Anine had produced as an eight-year-old had been replaced by an enormous brass plate.