“Shush! You’ll wake the bloody cat!” Ove hisses angrily while Adrian reels backwards, a swelling as large as a medium-size pack of ravioli on his forehead.

“What in the name of God are you doing here?” he raves, the gun still firmly fixed on them. “It’s the middle of the bloody night!”

Mirsad is holding a big bag in his hand, which he gently drops into the snow. Adrian impulsively holds his hands up as if he’s about to be robbed, and almost loses his balance and falls into the snow again.

“It was Adrian’s idea,” Mirsad begins, looking down into the snow.

“Mirsad came out today, you know!” Adrian blurts out.

“What?”

“He . . . came out, you know. Told everyone he was . . .” says Adrian, but he seems slightly distracted, partly by the fact that a fuming old man in his underpants is pointing a gun at him, and partly because he is increasingly convinced that he’s sustained some sort of concussion.

Mirsad straightens up and nods at Ove with more determination.

“I told my dad I’m gay.”

Ove’s eyes grow slightly less threatening. But he doesn’t lower his rifle.

“My dad hates gays. He always said he’d kill himself if he found out that any of his children were gay,” Mirsad goes on.

After a moment’s silence he adds:

“He didn’t take it so well. You might say.”

“He throwed him out!” Adrian interjects.

“Threw,” Ove corrects.

Mirsad picks up his bag from the ground and nods anew at Ove.

“This was a stupid idea. We shouldn’t have disturbed—”

“Disturbed me with what?” Ove cuts him short.

Now that he’s standing here in his underpants in below-freezing temperatures, he might as well at least find out the reason why, it seems to him.

Mirsad takes a deep breath. As if he’s physically shoving his pride down his throat.

“Dad said I was sick and not welcome under his roof with my . . . ‘unnatural ways,’” he says, swallowing hard before he manages to spit out the word “unnatural.”

“Because you’re a bender?” Ove clarifies.

Mirsad nods.

“I don’t have any relatives here in town. I was going to stay the night at Adrian’s, but his mum’s new boyfriend is staying. . . .”

He goes quiet. Looks like he’s feeling very silly.

“It was an idiotic idea,” he says in a low voice and makes a move to turn around and leave.

Adrian, on the other hand, seems to be rediscovering a desire for discussion, and he stumbles eagerly through the snow towards Ove.

“What the hell, Ove! You’ve got a load of space in there! So we thought maybe he could crash here tonight?”

“Here? This is not a damned hotel!” says Ove, raising the rifle so that Adrian’s chest collides right into the barrel.

Adrian freezes. Mirsad takes two quick steps forward through the snow and puts his hand on the rifle.