She carries the rabbit over to the bins by the outbuilding, and after some hesitation chooses the one marked GENERAL WASTE. The wind has got up, the trees are swaying, and as she turns her back on the forest and sets off towards the house, she gets the same feeling she had the other day. She knows why – it’s because of Agnes’s question, and Håkan’s whispering. Is this far enough? Do you really think they won’t find you if they want to? You have to tell her, Anna!

*

That night the dream comes back, for the first time in months. The claustrophobic hospital room: Anna in the chair, Håkan in the bed beside her. The air is dry and smells of antiseptic, the light is subdued. Machines hum, tubes and wires are wound around one another like larvae, and somewhere underneath it all there is a frail human body. A body that was once Håkan, and is now in the process of slowly wasting away.

‘Please help me, Anna,’ he whispers. Raises a skinny hand and points to the machine next to the bed with a gnarled finger that ought to belong to a much older man. It is a square box with buttons at the front, an infusion pump sending morphine into his blood.

The tears come as always, blurring the image of the room. She hears his voice.

‘I don’t want to die, not like this. Please help me, Anna!’

New scene. An interview room.

Two internal investigators on one side of the table, Anna and her defence lawyer on the other side.

‘Did you do it?’ one of the investigators asks, and it takes a few seconds before she realises that the man is actually Jens Friberg.

*

She is woken by a noise. Or at least she thinks she heard something; she is suddenly wide awake, her heart pounding. She lies still, listening hard. The room is pitch dark; she can hear the faint sound of the wind outside. She sits up, checks her phone. Two o’clock in the morning – four hours until her alarm goes off. She needs a wee, and gets up quietly so as not to disturb Agnes and Milo. She pauses outside Agnes’s door, but all is peaceful.