The rain has saturated my hood and one of my aids is getting feedback so I slip both out and place them in my bra. Best place: warm and dry. Trick from my audiologist.

Two paperclips. I always keep a few in my coat pocket, along with a pen and a small notepad and couple of spare hearing-aid batteries. I bend one paperclip over onto itself and flatten it out. I straighten the other completely.

The wind catches round my neck and I look one way, then the other. I don’t like being this vulnerable. Unable to hear someone approach behind my back or at my side. Unable to explain my being here. Unable really to justify even to myself why I’m standing behind an old newspaper office in murder town armed only with two fucking paperclips.

I insert the folded paperclip and hold it in place with my finger. There needs to be some rotational pressure on the lock.

Silence.

The raindrops bounce up off the pavement and dampen the underside of my coat. Inside my coat. Only Swedish rainfall can do that.

I rake the straightened paperclip back and forth, pushing it in to engage each pin within the lock mechanism, but also acutely aware of my back. My flanks. The people that could be observing me right now. Waiting for their moment to pounce.

I’m about to quit when something inside the lock gives. Thank god for the rehabilitated ex-con on YouTube thoughtful enough to share his lock-picking expertise. I slowly turn the looped paperclip and the padlock opens. Best thing about this is that when I leave I’ll clip it locked again and nobody will ever know I was here.

I open the door and walk inside.

No more rain beating down on my head.

My phone is in my pocket and I can use the torch function if I need to but I’d rather avoid it.

A small kitchenette and toilet immediately inside the back door, then a staircase leading upstairs. I tiptoe toward the front of the building. The large room with Ragnar’s oak desk in the centre. Framed stories on every wall. Some black and white, others in colour. All of them faded. I can see the town square through the large window, like I’m watching it on a cinema screen. Black trees glistening with sweet rain. Cars drive by, their headlights streaking in the murk. The neon sign from the Visberg Grill coming and going behind the apple tree branches as they sway in the wind.

I sit down on the floor shielded by Ragnar’s desk and place my aids back in.

They’re working fine.

The wind changes direction and rain starts to beat against the window.