‘Nigella, Jamie and Gordon taught me everything I know,’ she says. ‘Food is my third biggest passion.’

‘Second?’ I say.

‘TV.’

‘First?’

She looks at me with her knife in her hand and a parsley leaf affixed to her lip. ‘Men.’

‘You got your priorities straight,’ I say.

‘People say unconditional love is unrealistic. I say it’s the only sort. You have a boyfriend?’

‘Girlfriend,’ I say.

‘What’s her name?’

I like that she didn’t squirm or close up or say something cutesy.

‘I call her “N”.’

She smiles and drops pappardelle ribbons into boiling water.

‘If it’s Nigella then I’m officially very fucking jealous.’

Ten minutes later we’re eating from large white, asymmetrical bowls. Steaming tangles of pappardelle, flat and shiny with oil. Caramelised mushroom slices, each one fried off in butter and then garlic. My pasta is hot and covered with parmesan shavings and cracked black pepper and fresh parsley. It is excellent food.

‘Thanks for this, you didn’t have to.’

‘I’m just glad you didn’t drive off to Falun. There will be nothing much to see there tonight.’

‘Had to tell your local sheriff I was headed there. The road’s closed. Truck crashed into a bus shelter on the hill.’

‘Course it did.’

I frown at Julia.

‘Last year on Pan Night, a lorry jack-knifed on the road. The year before it was an oil spill that closed it.’

She looks at me.

‘They shut down the town every Pan Night?’

‘They try,’ she says. ‘My mum used to hate this night. The way the Edlunds impose themselves on the rest of us. Take it over even more than on a normal night.’

‘Did your mum move away?’

Julia looks down at her pasta and the candlelight dances over her eyelids.

‘I lost her two years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She looks up, smiling. ‘You weren’t to know. No need to apologise. She wasn’t in a good place. My dad left before I was born. She fell in love eventually, but it didn’t work out well. She told me she loved the man despite him lying to her that he’d divorce his wife. All the usual bullshit excuses. She waited and waited and then she got sick. It was almost a relief at the end, to be honest. For her and for me.’

‘I lost my mum last year,’ I say. ‘Just before Christmas.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ she says. ‘Dad?’

I shake my head.

‘Two orphans eating Visberg-forest mushrooms on Pan Night,’ I say, lifting my glass of whisky and Coke. ‘To you.’

‘To us.’