Valera had gone looking for solitude and she hadn’t found it. But she wasn’t ready to go back to the hotel yet. Despite having cleaned herself up in Helsinki and at the Reisen, she could still feel grains of dust under her fingernails and smell the carnage of Povenets B in her hair. They were a constant, taunting reminder of what she’d lost. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get rid of them, but she knew that if she went back to the Reisen she’d just fixate on them.

She wanted to taste at least some of the freedom she’d gone through so much for, so she picked a path and started down it, falling into step with the other people who had chosen it for their late-afternoon stroll and letting them guide her deeper into the island.

The woods became very dense, very quickly. The background hum of the city faded. Valera was reminded a little of Leningrad. It was also a city of islands, and some of them had been left wild. But few of their trees had survived the siege. Their wood was needed for shoring up defences or burning for heat, and their bark, in the most desperate moments, for food. A couple of the islands had been replanted with fresh stock, but they were saplings compared to the huge, old trees of Djurgården.

If it hadn’t been for the other people on the path her mind might also have taken her back to the forest surrounding Povenets B. But before it could the path opened up to reveal a wide, neat lawn. On the far side stood a low, curved building, painted yellow and white. It was flanked with Swedish flags, and the word Skansen was written above it in more iron.

Valera joined a queue of people making their way through an archway in the side of the building and discovered, as she handed over one of the notes Alve had given her, that Skansen was some kind of amusement park and open-air museum.

She walked past small farmhouses with country gardens that butted up against clapboard cottages with thatched roofs, and bright, red-painted halls. People in old-fashioned clothes passed her by on horse-drawn carts, or cleaned the steps of townhouses, or mingled with visitors, chatting with parents and explaining things to children.

Coming from somewhere that devoted so much time and energy to erasing its past, Valera was shocked to see such a celebration of history.