‘We all fought our own battles in our own ways. My father, my mother, my grandmother. And we all lost.’ He pauses and looks up at me. ‘Everyone lost.’

I move out my knight.

‘Where did you live before?’

‘Bosnia,’ he says, smiling, looking up, moving another pawn. ‘In a small town. I was training to be a schoolteacher. But then the whole world turned upside down. My neighbours, many of whom had been my parents’ neighbours, their friends, suddenly became my sworn enemies. Laws disintegrated. The rules of etiquette changed more in a day than you could imagine them ever changing in a whole lifetime. Unacceptable things became acceptable. Or invisible. There was no Geneva convention in those small towns at that time, on those quiet country roads. There was no time to consider the consequences for your soul and the souls around you.’

I move out my bishop.

‘Why are you here in Visberg?’ he asks. ‘I heard you are from Stockholm?’

‘I am. I moved out here to be close to my mother.’

I don’t usually open up like this but his monologue about war and souls and neighbours means nothing is off limits. Once you go there you can go anywhere.

‘Good daughter,’ he says, moving his queen four spaces.

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not good. Just present.’

He looks at me for a while then nods and checks on the pizzas.

‘Terrible about Arne the plumber,’ he says.

I move my rook to defend against his amateur queen offensive.

‘I saw the body.’

He looks at me with pain in his face. Not shock or curiosity like other people. I can tell he doesn’t want a vivid description or a blow-by-blow account of the lifting of the coat. That severed neck. The blood pooled on the beech leaf.

‘It’s so vulnerable, no.’

I frown.

‘Life. Our lifelines. We might feel strong but we can be ended in the blink of an eye. Once you see a spirit turn into flesh and bone you can never go back. It’s like you have new eyes. Different eyes. The fragility of our own existence here on this planet. The fleetingness. The way we can all be destroyed in an instant.’

He moves his queen and looks up at me.

‘Check mate.’

16

I take the three pizza boxes and walk through the square to my truck. There’s a black rat over by the bandstand gnawing on a hot-dog bun.

The air has a chill to it up here that we don’t get down in Gavrik. Something to do with the altitude.

An old woman with a yellow headscarf is filling a cast-iron fire basket with logs. Another woman outside the Hive is doing the exact same thing. She bends up and I see she’s also wearing a pale yellow headscarf.