But as though nothing could change her state of mind, she’d still been in bed with the curtains closed. It was the second day in a row, and he was beginning to feel concerned that she was headed straight for a severe depression if nothing changed.

Theodor’s closed door had, as usual, done little to keep his death music from reverberating through the entire house. When Fabian knocked and opened the door, he discovered a maelstrom of dirty underwear, pizza boxes with dried-up leftovers, stained sheets, drink cans, crisp and sweet bags, CDs and DVDs, snus tins and gaming controllers.

Theodor had been sitting in front of his screen in the middle of the mayhem, dressed in boxer shorts and a vest top, breaking uncountable traffic rules to get away from the howling police cars. He’d been struck by how big his son was. Not big as in grown-up but as in pudgy. He, who’d always been so thin they’d had to mix cream into his food. Now he was borderline overweight and so pale the spots shone like brake lights on his face.

But he hadn’t said a word about any of it, had simply stepped inside and calmly opened the window. Then he’d turned the stereo down and asked Theodor to go and have a shower and then come down and help with dinner. But Theodor had been too engrossed in his escape from the police to respond.

He’d wanted nothing more than to turn off both the music and the computer and have a serious talk about how things couldn’t go on like this. About how it was time for Theodor to face up to what he’d done, difficult as that may be. But he needed Sonja to back him up; as long as they weren’t in agreement and she stayed shut up in their bedroom, his hands were tied.

He indulged in a glass of wine and decided to put on music for company instead. He went for The Orb’s first album, a double disc from the early nineties with a title so long he’d never managed to learn it.

The sampled girl’s voice in ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ made him think of Matilda. She wasn’t home, and that certainly didn’t feel good, considering she’d only been discharged a few days ago. That neither Sonja nor Theodor seemed to have any idea where she might be did nothing to reassure him either.

But halfway through making dinner, just as he’d located the nutmeg in the jumble of old spice bags in the cupboard and started grating it into the béchamel, he thought he heard her voice. To make sure it wasn’t part of The Orb’s soaring audio collage, he turned the stereo down, and yes, that was Matilda he could hear in the basement.