She recognises his deep voice from their telephone conversation yesterday evening, and yet there’s something about him that doesn’t quite fit. Call-me-Lasse seems to have picked up on her hesitation.

‘I guess you were expecting someone older? You’re not the first. People around here started mixing me up with my father before I turned thirty. It didn’t help that we ran the practice together for years, and used the same phone number.’

He smiles, showing his teeth. If his office had been in Stockholm they would doubtless have been perfectly symmetrical and unnaturally white, but instead they are perfectly normal for a man in his late forties.

‘These days Dad spends his time playing golf in Majorca while I keep the ship afloat.’ He laughs, and she can’t help smiling back.

To be honest she isn’t particularly fond of solicitors or lawyers – she has trouble putting up with her own. But there’s something about Call-me that makes it hard to dislike him. The blond side fringe – which probably isn’t natural – makes him look a bit like the Milky Bar Kid.

She glances at his left hand. No wedding ring, no indentation, not even a narrow strip of white skin. She involuntarily runs her thumb over the inside of her own ring finger. Two years have passed, yet she thinks she can still feel the little furrow where once her wedding band sat.

‘I’m so pleased you’ve decided to live here rather than in the village. Tabor is something very special.’

Call-me smiles again, gestures towards the building behind him as if he were an estate agent rather than a family solicitor.

‘I don’t know if I’ve already told you, but the house was built as a mission church in 1896. The old story is that the missionary priest cured a sick child belonging to the man who owned the land, and was given the plot and the building materials as a thank you. It’s probably just a myth. The revivalist movement was making great progress everywhere towards the end of the nineteenth century, and mission houses popped up in every little backwater. There were three more in the area, but Tabor is the only one that’s still standing. Shall we go inside?’

‘I have to wait for my daughter. Her dog ran off.’ Anna realises that the barking and shouting have continued while she and Call-me have been talking. She probably ought to go and see what’s happening, offer to help, but the fact is that she’s enjoying the brief respite from Agnes and her passive-aggressive behaviour.

‘We could go into the kitchen – I’ll leave the front door open so she can come and find us,’ Call-me suggests, as if he’d read her mind. She hesitates briefly, then says, ‘Sure,’ and returns his smile.