The adults sharpened their appetites with a small glass of glögg: mulled wine. The girls loved the drink Julmust, which always tasted to Hannah like flat cola, with their Prinskorv sausage, spare rib and meatballs. They dipped happily into the gravlax and the beetroot salad but weren’t sold on herring or Janssons frestelse of potato, anchovy and onion.

The cheesecake and ischoklad – ‘ice chocolate’ – found great favour. Even Nico ate three of the little sweets. She ate eight, herself.

Finally, Nico said it was time to get the girls to bed and they said their goodnights and drove in silence through the forest between Älgäng and Nässjö, moonlight turning the snow and trees to a landscape of black and white.

Maria had fallen asleep as soon as the car wheels turned and stayed more or less that way through being changed into pyjamas, taken to the loo and slipped beneath her quilt.

‘You’re tired too,’ Nico murmured to Josie. ‘You can read in bed for a while.’ She yawned and fished unicorn-strewn pyjamas out of a suitcase.

Hannah went down to the sitting room, switched on a couple of lamps and built a fire in the corner of the open fireplace in the Swedish way, enjoying the crackle as the flames took hold.

A soft tread on the stair. Nico appeared and passed through the corner of the room headed for the kitchen, reappearing in a few moments with a bottle of red wine. ‘It’s Dad’s but I’ll replenish his stock.’

‘That looks great.’ She added another log to the fire and returned to her place on the sofa. Nico handed her a brimming glass of the jewel-red liquid and stood the bottle on a small table. He dropped down beside her and helped himself to a share of her footstool so that their feet, in thick woolly socks, were not far apart.

He drank half his wine and sighed, letting his head loll back against the sofa. ‘I need this. Dad looks grey and Mattias has an ant up his arse about something. He was morose when he drove me to Jönköping, as if I’d offended him.’

Hannah thought of Mattias’s earlier terseness and Felicia’s wary expression. ‘Is he usually happier to see you when you come to Sweden?’

He shrugged. ‘No, but he’s not so obviously … distant.’ He shifted slightly, his shoulder settling lightly against hers. She didn’t break the contact but examined the pleasure the innocent touch gave her and the way her heart began to hurry the blood around her veins. His touch felt deliberate. A signal. A tentative approach.