Her prayers were answered, and faster than she dared hope. Just a few minutes after the visitor’s arrival, Kerstin, who was significantly more attentive now, heard the engine start back up, before the car reversed into the yard to turn around, and then the sound grew ever more distant. Only then did she open the door and step into the rain.

She glanced at the two plastic-wrapped bundles that were begging for attention, reached for the floor scraper and turned them over with the intention of letting the rain play its part before she got to grips with them. Then she tore off her gloves, dropped them on the grass and headed over to the slaughterhouse, calling out for Jeanette—who made herself known when she peeked up from behind a barrel brimming over with rainwater.

Kerstin struggled to contain her laughter when she caught sight of her. Jeanette looked as though she had taken a dip in the barrel without permission and been caught in the act.

“Oh my sweetheart,” Kerstin exclaimed compassionately. “Did you end up hidden round the end of the house?”

Jeanette nodded and looked like she was about to burst into tears.

“And the water was overflowing and I was about to sneeze and cough and it was just terrible,” said Jeanette. “I thought I was going to give us away.”

“But you didn’t,” said Kerstin, rinsing herself off in the water barrel. “You did a great job. Come on, let’s get you into some dry clothes. Then we’ll take a closer look at those bags.”

“We need to check the root cellar first,” said Jeanette. “It was so weird . . . The only thing that person did was to slide back the bolt on the door.”

“Without opening it?” said Kerstin.

“Without opening it. They hesitated for a while, then went back to the car. That was all I could see through the crack between the wall and the water barrel.”

“What a bizarre thing to do,” Kerstin said thoughtfully. “Coming all the way out here just to undo a bolt.”

“Without even noticing our leftovers on the veranda,” Jeanette pointed out.

That was something that hadn’t occurred to Kerstin in her minutes of horror spent in the outhouse. They had left truly obvious evidence of their presence. Under normal circumstances those would have disclosed the presence of intruders on the property. But the circumstances were anything but ordinary, she noted to herself. The visitor hadn’t noticed their cups or backpacks on the veranda, or the black bin liners outside the privy. They weren’t really in the here and now, and had been focusing on something else entirely. They had headed towards the root cellar, undid the bolt, and then departed without doing anything else.