The dinner lady down the hall let me drink Sprites. Let me watch TV, even through there were only a few channels in Sweden back then. She let me eat Marabou chocolate. Always the orange-crisp version, always cut up into squares with a boning knife, always placed on her IKEA coffee table in a small floral bowl.

‘You want to watch something on TV?’ I ask.

He nods. ‘Captain ’Merica.’

‘Not sure about that one. Let me see.’

Kids need TV and to hell with anyone who says otherwise. All the best people I know loved TV and movies and books as children. Stories are the escape that all young humans crave.

I flick through Netflix and decline about seventeen of his suggestions.

‘What about Dumbo?’

‘Looks boring.’

‘Negative, Danny boy. Dumbo is one of the finest movies ever made. Buckle up.’

He frowns at me.

‘Chocolate?’

He nods.

We watch the opening scene. The music and the train working hard to get up the hill. The elephants knocking in tent pegs with mallets, and the stalk flying in with the big-eared pachyderm baby. Dan’s transfixed. He’s crossed over into that world.

I lean back on the sofa and Dan doesn’t get too close but he moves his arm so it’s next to my wrist and suddenly I get the same sensation you have when a stray cat lets you stroke its head. That trust.

The movie plays on and I almost fall asleep. From the nightmare of last night, that severed head, the most disturbing town rituals I have ever witnessed, to this. I close my eyes and think back to Dad and me watching Dumbo together.

There’s a bang onscreen and I snap out of my daydream and remember what Tobias the hygienist said.

The gamer twins.

Hunted 2.0.

I sit up and ask Dan if he’s hungry and he tells me he’s not. Stomach full of Marabou with digestive-biscuit pieces and Sprite will have that effect. I google Hunted 2.0 on my phone. It’s rated R18. I check the Wikipedia entry even though I’m no fan of pundits in the media casually linking video games to violent acts in the real world. The evidence is tenuous at best. I click down to the ‘Controversies’ sub-heading and find more sub-sub-headings and footnotes. Japan, Mexico, Ireland, and South Africa. Two attacks by students in a school, one in a gaming competition, and one at home. All mutilations. I YouTube-search the game. Shit, it looks nasty. Shoot ’em ups and beat ’em ups I’m used to, graphic beheadings I am not.

‘What’s that?’ says Dan, peering at my phone at an angle I hope to God ensures he didn’t see anything.

‘Work.’

‘Is it Captain ’Merica?’

I smile.

The movie ends.

Then the two-hour limit ends.

Then another hour goes by.

‘Where do you think your mamma went?’

‘To find my pappa.’

‘Where did he go?’