‘Personal luxury goods go down well here so I’m doing OK,’ she answered. It was barely OK, but with Christmas trading around the corner she was optimistic. Her boyfriend Albin, a fund manager, was doing much more than OK so it was his name on the lease. It had saved messing around with guarantors, especially as she wasn’t a Swedish national, but lately she’d wondered if she should have found another way. Their relationship was so weird now. It was as if someone had switched the fun and affection off. Alarmed and confused, she kept trying to talk but Albin pleaded work hassles and put her off. Though she was thirty and he was only thirty-two he’d developed a habit of talking down to her about his job being ‘high octane’ and stressful. It made her reluctant to pursue the issue but the worry bee buzzed constantly in her bonnet.

Nico’s blue eyes smiled. ‘Strange you should end up in my homeland. Så du talar svenska nu?’

She laughed and answered his question as to whether she spoke Swedish, ‘Ja, jag klarar mig.’ Yes, I manage. ‘I came to work for IKEA originally but I’d had a shop in England and I soon went back to wanting my own name above the door.’ But though her words were light, she was absorbing an unpleasant fact.

Nico was not the golden boy she remembered.

He was so gaunt his cheekbones almost broke through his skin and stubble carpeted a fleshless jaw. His battered sweatshirt bore a stain like a map of a country and his jeans were grubby. The workman’s boots on his feet could have been dragged from a skip, his fingernails were black and his hair long grown out from any style.

What had happened to the shining teen who’d drawn everyone to his exotic light? Boys had wanted to be him and females had followed his tall, lean athlete’s body as if attached by rope.

‘What are you doing these days?’ she asked. Then, realising that if he’d fallen on hard times he might not want to answer such a direct question, hastily interrupted herself. ‘Do you have plans? I’ll be putting out new stock this evening so I’m closing now to grab a burger first. Why don’t you join me so we can catch up?’ She bustled past to switch the sign on the door from ‘open’ to ‘closed’ – öppet to stängt. He smelled of soil and vegetation and she recoiled, not from him but from the horrible thought that he might be sleeping rough. That would be awful in this sleet. She shivered. This would be her third Swedish winter and in Albin’s apartment on the desirable thoroughfare of Nybrogatan she’d accumulated a closet full of coats, hats, scarves, walking boots, snow boots and a stack of thermal base layers.

What were Nico’s winter resources?