Come off it jana he said. I know everything went wrong last night but it won’t happen again. Truly I promise.

If we drive past the saw I said despite knowing I should have said no. I’ve promised katarina a photo of our carvings.

The snow had melted during the day. Here and there patches of bare ground were showing. It slushed under our shoes as we 67followed my footsteps towards the birch. John stopped and looked around.

This is a great place. Tore was in my class. When was that I asked.

Nineteenhundredandseventyfive.

68

TWELVE

My plan was daft. We were on the move towards the house now. Me and bror and magnus katarina johan tony daniel and andreas. The door was locked and the curtains pulled across the windows. We circled it to see if they had left an airing window open or if there was a forgotten entrance to the cellar but the whole place was well locked up. No one had lived here that we could remember. It had probably stood empty for a long time.

Abandoned houses in our village and in the villages for miles around were commonplace even back in those days. We had got inside most of them. Some were wrecks with leaking roofs and caved-in floors. We tiptoed along the floor beams. Exhilarated by the possibility of treasure of finding something forgotten in the piles of rubble. Small things were still special. A dried child’s shoe or a rusty spice container. We collected our finds in the bakehouse at johan’s and made careful entries into a jotter with a plastic back.

The house by the sawmill was not in bad shape but definitely abandoned. Drawn curtains. No signs of life anywhere. At some point I had asked father who had lived in the house. Some tinker family he told me and got on with whatever he was doing.

Let’s break in I said after a few rounds when none of us had found any way in. It can’t be that hard. Just a small hole in a window so we can reach inside. Then we can nail something up to keep the rain out. 69

The others exchanged glances. We were curious but a break-in would be going further than we ever had before.

In the end tony said we could pick the lock. He had a piece of steel baling wire in his pocket. We clustered behind him and cheered him on. The lock clicked open.

The stale air was like a wall. Mould and dust whirled in the draught from the door. Flies and butterflies were bouncing against the window panes. Spidernets hung from the ceilings.

We crowded into the hallway.

On the kitchen table a cereal box and a jug of soured milk all dried up. Also coffee cups pudding plates pack of flatbread and an open container with oboy drinking choc.