She doesn’t answer him. Instead, she leans forward and rests her head on Agnes’s arm. Presses as close as she can, inhales the smell of her, just as she did when Agnes was a little girl and had had a nightmare.

‘I’m here, sweetheart,’ she murmurs. ‘Mummy’s here. Everything’s going to be all right.’

She hears the doctor and the nurse shut the door behind them. She stays exactly where she is, drifting between sleep and wakefulness. She gets the feeling they are not alone in the room. Håkan is standing beside her, with one hand on her shoulder, the other on Agnes’s.

*

When she wakes up she is back in her own bed, with only a faint memory of the doctor persuading her to rest for a while. There is a large bouquet of flowers on the bedside table; it must have been delivered while she was asleep. She thinks she can see Call-me’s signature on the card.

All of her strength is gone. Her muscles are aching as if she’s done ten strenuous gym sessions one after the other, and she has to ask the nurse to open the pot of yoghurt on her breakfast tray. When she’s finished eating another doctor comes in, reads through her notes and explains that Anna is suffering from exhaustion, she has swallowed some of the river water, and is badly bruised, but miraculously she hasn’t suffered any more serious injuries, and can therefore go home as soon as she feels better.

After the doctor has left, Anna goes over the course of events. The brakes stopped working, the car skidded on a sharp bend. It left the road, rolled over and landed in the river. The doctor was too professional to say so, but clearly things could have ended very badly. If they’d hit a thick tree trunk, or if the car had finished up on its roof in the river, then none of them would have survived. The thought is beyond chilling.

A faint knock on the door makes her glance up. Jens Friberg walks in, his uniform pristine as always.

‘How are you?’ he says, looking worried.

‘I feel as if someone drove a steamroller over me.’

‘And your daughter?’

‘Concussion. They’re keeping her sedated until this afternoon.’

He gives a brief nod, refrains from saying how terrible it must be, which earns him another bonus point.

‘Do you remember what happened?’ he says, talking out his notebook. So, he’s here in an official capacity, not as a friend. She deletes the bonus point she’s just awarded him, and knocks off a couple more out of sheer pettiness.