The wind and the rain drench me as I jog through the square. I pause for a moment under the domed shelter of the bandstand. Nobody around. Nothing here. Rain beating down on the roof. There are no lights on upstairs in any of the buildings on the dark side of the square. The block looks deserted. Falk lives upstairs but he must be out. I schlep through apple sludge and mud to get to the dental surgery, then walk round the back of the buildings. Back doors are easier to work on than front doors. I pass garages, car-parking spaces and salt bins. Some kind of small electricity sub-station humming away in the rain. The cover says ‘Danger To Life – High Voltage. Keep Out’.

I think about the master key used by Emil Eriksson to open the Hive self-storage units. I think about how I gained access to Mum’s locked trunks after she died. How I tried to force the mechanisms and actually succeeded with some of the smaller ones. But then I needed help with the biggest box. The one that contained all her most precious items. I found my answer on YouTube. There’s something irresistible about a locked box. Some childhood fantasy of treasure chests and secret maps. That, combined with an insatiable hunger to find out more about Mum. And Dad. It seemed impossible to ask her to her face, back when she was alive. But I could find out for myself. You can discover pretty much anything on YouTube if you look hard enough. It is the present-day equivalent of the Library of Alexandria. I searched for how to pick a padlock, and within fifteen minutes I was in. The lock lying open and defeated by my socked feet. The smell of old paper. I took out each of the items and inspected them carefully. Mum and Dad’s wedding certificate. A photo of her holding me on the day I was born. My crying was freefall at this point. I was using the silk pillowcase as a tissue, the one she never opened yet stored in her locked chest. Perhaps a gesture to the dinner-lady neighbour. Then I found Dad’s knife from his boy-scout years, engraved with his initials. Her wedding bouquet shrivelled to a dry and crunchy mess inside a plastic ice-cream tub. I found a photo of Mum at a dance when she was young, laughing and messing around with her girlfriends, and I sobbed through my smiles. Then other photos I’d never seen before in my life. Her and Dad sitting on deck chairs on a beach somewhere. The note on the back said, ‘Skrea Strand, Falkenberg ’95’. When I looked through that chest I felt we’d been a family. The three of us.