Maria sits down next to her on the sofa again. ‘Gabriella gave it to me last week. She asked me to keep it hidden and only mail it if something happened to her.’

Klara looks up and meets Maria’s eyes. ‘So she thought something might happen to her?’ she asks.

‘Recently she believed she was being followed. When she told me that, I didn’t know what to think. We didn’t know each other that well before, mostly just short chats in the stairwell. I recognized her, of course, from the news. She’s hard to miss with all that fabulous red hair.’

Klara nods.

‘But to believe you’re being followed,’ Maria continues. ‘Alf was…’ She pauses, takes a sip of wine to gather her strength. ‘My husband was manic depressive. Sometimes his manias led to paranoia. When Gabi talked about being followed, I’ll admit I was mostly worried about her mental health.’

‘I understand,’ Klara says. ‘It must have been terribly hard. With your husband, I mean.’

Maria nods slowly, staring out the window at the snow and the water. Then she shakes it off and turns to Klara again. ‘But Gabriella wasn’t paranoid. I quickly understood that, though she didn’t want to tell me what she was involved with.’

‘But why did she tell you she felt she was being followed?’ Klara asks.

Why didn’t Gabriella tell her anything this autumn? After everything they’d been through in the past few years? Didn’t Gabi trust her any more? She can’t make sense of it.

Klara takes another gulp of wine and leans back on the couch with the still-unopened envelope on her knee.

‘She probably wasn’t sure,’ Maria says. ‘And maybe she didn’t want to worry you? But she came up here and rang my door about a week ago. She pulled me to the kitchen window, which looks out onto the street, and pointed to one of the stairwells on the other side. A man stood there, talking on a phone. She asked me to check again the next night. And I did, and sure enough there he was again. And the night after that.

‘Before she left that night, she gave me this envelope and asked me to send it to you if anything happened. I thought it all seemed a bit dramatic. But, well, I’m drawn to such things, too. We have too little excitement in our lives, Klara. Well, not you and Gabriella. But I do. ’

Maria leans back on the sofa, staring thoughtfully down at her glass again. ‘But I didn’t think it would turn out like this. As I said, at first I thought she was a bit paranoid, that what she’d been through with Säpo had left its mark. But now I understand that she knew what was going on. Or what was about to happen.’