Five minutes after the manager has driven away, Harald Yeoman exits his vehicle. He takes the thirty feet of rope that has been lying on the back seat the entire time and he loops it around a sign that tells customers where to place their trolley once they’ve unpacked their shopping into the boot of their car.

It’s night. It’s dark. It’s cold. His car is still running. The driver’s-side window is open. He sits back down, fastens his seatbelt and then threads the other end of the rope through the open window, dropping the loop over his head.

He tightens the noose and takes one look at the passenger seat where he left the folded newspaper. Beneath the old news is his message.

Das ist eine mögliche Lösung.

Es ist weder das Ende.

Noch ist es der Anfang.

He revs the engine twice and looks straight ahead. Then pushes the accelerator into the floor and releases the clutch. The car bursts forwards. The rope starts to unravel. As it reaches its limit, the car is travelling fast enough to tighten around Yeoman’s neck and take his head clean off.

The car continues forwards for another twenty feet before coming to a stop. Yeoman is headless in his seat. His face rolling across the concrete outside. His love letter to The People of Choice on the seat next to him.

He’d filled the tank with unleaded the day before.

54

Since the sixties, Sweden has been perceived as having the highest rate of suicide in the world. US President Eisenhower even bleated out this notion in the early part of that decade. And it stuck.

Eventually, a more standardised measurement of this cause of death was introduced internationally, and it was found that Sweden was lacking. Lacking in men and women who were dying at their own hand. In fact, its rate has remained steady over the last decade; twelve people in every hundred thousand die from suicide.

Scandinavia is getting a raw deal about their identity due to some questionable maths and research. Even though we know they earn money and they’re happy and their healthcare is heavily subsidised and they look after their elderly citizens. Somehow, a loudmouthed American politician says what he wants and everyone buys into it.

You’ll find a good sixty-five countries above Sweden on a list that details a country’s suicide rate. Including the US. And a hundred or so that are higher up than places like Denmark and Norway.

And, somehow, dentists received a bum rap, too. Like they’re the most depressed profession on earth.

So, when Noah Holmgren, a dentist from Linköping, slits his wrists and sucks down a few lungfuls of nitrous oxide to ease his passing, it could look like a bad joke.