If someone had asked Fabian, he wouldn’t have been able to give a good explanation. There were no sound arguments or rational reasons for suddenly slamming the brakes so hard the tyres screeched, making a U-turn and going back a few hundred feet before turning right on to the gravel path and continuing straight into the forest. All he knew was that he’d taken a wrong turn but that he was now on the right path.

He drove down towards the Pålsjö Pavilion, a café that despite its impossible location in the middle of the woods was routinely filled to capacity with waffle-munching customers the moment the sun peeked out. He’d been there three times with Theodor and every time they’d had to wait for a table. Now it was empty and deserted. No customers. No staff. No Theodor.

And yet he didn’t hesitate for a moment. It was as though he knew, despite there being no way of knowing.

Fifty yards later, he turned left, and after another few hundred yards he reached the pedestrian bridge crossing the train tracks.

It was as deserted as the café. The night had filled the cutting with so much mist the two tracks that ran past thirty feet below were impossible to see. He couldn’t even see the other end of the bridge. Everything was shrouded; he only spotted Theodor’s bike on the ground when he reached the middle of the bridge.

He’d found the place, but was he too late? While Theodor had cycled straight here along the extension of Pålsjögatan, he’d taken the long way round, circling half the forest.

‘Theodor?’ he shouted into the mist. ‘Theodor, are you there?’

But the only reply was the echo of his own desperate voice, which subsided and grew increasingly diffuse and unclear the further away it retreated. It was as though he was listening to his own grief at the realization that his worst fears had become reality.

Something moved behind him. He turned around to see better, but with the dense mist all he could make out was a movement in the shadows. But there was something there. Something hovering in the air five or ten feet out from the bridge proper.

He walked up to the railing, which had been augmented with a tall fence whose top two feet angled outward to make it difficult for people who wanted to end things. That had clearly not deterred his son. Because there he was, or rather, there was his shadow.

It was only when he looked down and saw the metal wing jutting out above the tracks from the middle of the bridge that he started piecing it together. His son was perched at the tip of the wing, which didn’t look strong enough to support a full-grown person. Clearly Theodor was light enough, however, despite his recent weight gain.