‘The truth?’ Theodor got up from his chair, bright red in the face. ‘You want the truth? Huh? Do you?’ His voice was breaking. ‘The truth is you should thank your lucky fucking stars I brought the gun home that particular night. If not for the gun, you would have had to watch your family get executed, one after the other. But maybe that would have been better, because then I wouldn’t have had to put up with this shit.’

Fabian had to agree. Even though Theodor’s words stabbed like knives, every last one of them was unequivocally true.

9

The locksmith checked the new locks were working properly, handed the keys over to Molly Wessman and packed up his tools. After he disappeared down the stairs, she entered, closed the door behind her and stood waiting in the dark for a minute before turning the lock and latching the chain she normally never used.

It didn’t make her feel safer in the slightest. Her beloved flat down in Norra Hamnen, which had cost a fortune, had turned into a place that made her feel nothing but pure, unadulterated fear. But what was she supposed to do, she thought to herself, and continued in through the hallway without turning on the lights.

The living room looked the same, and yet not.

Nothing felt like hers any more. The TV, the sofa, the shelf with all her things. The whole flat. It was as though she had entered a strange country, having ignored every sign asking her to turn around and go somewhere else.

The problem was that she had nowhere else to go.

Pretending to be working late and sleeping on the sofa in the office would never work. Her colleagues would instantly know something was amiss.

Staying over with friends was not an option either. Having gone through her entire contact list, she had been forced to conclude it didn’t contain a single person she was close enough with to just turn up on their doorstep.

Friends had never been her thing. She had always preferred to be alone. Especially to being in a couple. She couldn’t see the point of chafing against the same old person every day, while the sex grew more and more uninspired. Especially when she had a sex life most people would cut off their little finger for.

At least, that’s what she’d had, in that previous life that had ended the moment she woke up this morning, a previous life that was increasingly feeling like a dream. Like a before and an after, in which loneliness was breaking her down like an injected poison.