I look into the wheelbarrow. It’s full of trolls, each one swaddled individually, like babies in soft fleece blankets. A barrow full of carved miniature people. One has painted red cheeks and a real hair moustache. Blond. Tiny white teeth. Another has a huge mouth with fat, red lips and a swollen tongue, probably ripped from the mouth of some Utgard mammal. The sisters once told me they bulk-buy their teeth off the internet, mostly from Eastern Europe. They told me they’re not expensive.

‘You want me to help you with your van door?’ I ask.

‘No, girl, I don’t.’ She gestures with her head. ‘Taking these specials to my storage lock-up. But you can help me get in if you don’t got better things to do.’

I walk with her and she is strong. I can see the muscles in her shoulders through her overalls as she pushes the troll barrow.

‘Is Alice okay?’

She grunts and says, ‘Not her best self, Alice. Hospital keeps on taking the skin off her flesh.’

‘Skin?’

Cornelia slows when she gets close to the kerb. As the barrow bumps down onto the road, the doll eyelids of one of the trolls pop open and the eyes beneath are shrivelled. They look like old grapes. Some kind of wild-animal eyes shrunken deep into their carved pine sockets.

‘Growths,’ says Cornelia. ‘They cut ’em out, but I ain’t optimistic, girl. It’s a bad state.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I say.

She pushes the barrow up the far kerb and along the side of the Hive and she says, ‘Yeah, you ain’t the only one.’

‘Main entrance?’ I ask.

‘I go in the back way,’ she says. ‘Top floor. I can take it all from here, girl. And don’t go blabbing your mouth about what I told you. Alice is stronger than an elk in August.’

She walks away, the wheel of her barrow squeaking in time with the bee on the roof. So Cornelia and Alice have a unit up in the exclusive, private upper floor. Makes sense, I guess.

I go round to the main entrance.

Door’s locked.

I ring the bell and wait and then ring it again.

Margareta comes over. She looks older than before. Sick with worry. The door opens.

‘They found my Emil?’

‘They’re out looking,’ I say. ‘They’ll get him back to you.’

She rubs her palms up and down her face and says something I can’t decipher.

‘We should have been taking soul cakes to the grave of his late father today,’ she says, crossing herself. ‘We do it every year, like clockwork.’ Then she looks up at the ceiling and shakes her head. ‘What the hell have I done to deserve all this?’

‘None of it’s your fault,’ I say. ‘Emil will turn up soon. My best friend went missing back over Midsommar and she came back unscathed.’