Hyllinge Mall consisted of three separate buildings. ICA Maxi and the home improvement store Bauhaus occupied one each and the rest of the shops jostled for space in the third. The first question was which of the three he should choose. ICA was represented by a one or a two, Bauhaus by a three or a four and the last building by a five or a six.

He cupped his hands to make a space for the dice between them and shook it until he felt sure the dice had had enough time to make its decision.

A two.

It had started spitting, so he pulled his hood up, left the bus shelter, crossed the car park, slunk in through the automatic doors of the ICA Maxi supermarket and grabbed one of the red wheeled baskets.

There were no customers in the first section, which contained kitchen things and meaningless plastic rubbish that no one ever bought. So he continued on to the vegetable section, which was his least favourite by some margin. In fact, he disliked it so much he’d started to avoid fresh vegetables altogether.

Not only did you have to pick your own vegetables and put them in bags, it was also becoming increasingly common for customers to be required to weigh their wares themselves and put price tags on them. Like being suddenly press-ganged into unsalaried employment. Just finding the right kind of lettuce among all the options took forever.

Then it was the other customers. Like the old lady squeezing and picking up mangos to sniff them, like some kind of dog.

He went over to the new potatoes and put one after another in a bag while studying the old lady from afar. She was dressed all in blue. Blue raincoat, blue shorts and blue wellies. Even the frames of her glasses, which were dangling on her chest, were bright blue.

In other words, the odds were on her side.

Five out of six possible outcomes were in her favour. The only thing she wouldn’t survive was a five, since five represented blue.

The order of the colours and which number should represent which one was something he’d had to ponder for quite a while before deciding that the only logical choice was to follow the order of the rainbow.

That meant red was represented by a one. Then followed orange, yellow, green, blue and finally purple, represented by a six. White, black, brown and grey were neutral and therefore irrelevant.

But in this case, it was all about the number five.

He grabbed one more potato, tied up the bag and put it in his basket. Then he stuck his hand in his pocket, pulled out his dice and started shaking it in his cupped hand, while walking over to the crate of red onions. Once he reached it, he opened his hand and looked.

A three.