“I’ll look after your money,” I said, “on condition you’ll go and phone your parents now and tell them you’re here and you’re okay.”

Silver looked at me. “You don’t have to do this, Clo.”

“I know. I know as well that it’s perfectly safe here and she’s safe but she doesn’t believe that.”

Liv said incongruously, “It is too late, past eleven o’clock at home. Sweden is one hour ahead of here.”

“And it’s broad daylight in Kiruna,” said Silver. “They’ll be enjoying the midnight sun.” He had come around to my point of view. If he never worried himself, he was aware that others did, and while he’d have liked to cure the world of anxiety, he knew it couldn’t be done by feeding fear. “Go on, give them a nice surprise, and when you come back we’ll have lit fresh candles for you.”

The mice fled as I put on the kitchen light. The sink was full of filthy plates and cups, the table and counters a jumble of food packages and tins mixed up with empty packets and used, unwashed cans, ashtrays that contained pyramids of ash and stubs, smeary wineglasses, cups with brown dregs in them. Too many things had been spilt on the floor for anything to restore it to cleanliness but a complete scrub. I found some candles, we put them out and Silver lit them. The lights out in the kitchen and the door shut, the mice came back. We could always hear them come scuttering out from their holes. Liv fed them regularly but there was no need when there was so much from which they could help themselves.

She was using the phone in Silver’s bedroom. We could just hear her voice and were pretty sure she really was talking to her parents, not from her words, which we of course couldn’t understand, but from the placatory tone designed to reassure that was entirely familiar to us. We used it ourselves. Very soon she came back.

“They ask me to go home.”

“There’s nothing to stop you,” I said. “All you have to do is buy an air ticket and you’ve got the money.”

“My father will send me the money. He will send by tele-something if I have a bank account but I have no bank account.”

“Telegraphic transfer,” said Silver. “You can use my bank account if you like.”

Liv had no reason not to trust Silver, rather the reverse. She had lived in his flat rent-free for more than two months, eaten his food and drunk his drink, smoked his cigarettes and used his water and electricity, all for nothing. In return she had given him a plague of mice. But she trusted no man, she had some deep-rooted prejudice against the male sex in practical matters. She gave me a sidelong look and her meaning was plain.