The cobbles glistened from the overnight rain. Her tyres sluiced through shallow puddles as she darted from alley to alley, cutting across the pedestrian thoroughfares that would soon be heaving with tourists looking for wooden Dala horses and bakeries to have fika in. In these long, thin alleys she was protected from the wind that came straight off the Baltic, but she knew that as soon as she took the left onto Stora Nygatan and over the bridge it would push at her back all the way to Ostermalm, until she closed the Mogerts’ garden gate behind her.

Traffic was light, with few commuters out yet. Small clusters of electric scooters stood poised by the bridge, outside the main station, at street corners and by bike racks. There weren’t even any drivers in the embassy cars as Bell powered up the colourful street, and she had a sense of suspension, as though the city was holding its breath – just about to exhale, just about to start up again. What would today hold?

She had slept well, awaking in the starfish position on her double bed, although she’d still wished she could stay there for another four hours. But one glance at her employers’ faces as she walked in, and it was clear they had had a very different night. Both of them were pale and tense, sitting stiffly and in silence at the whitewashed kitchen table as she shut the back door quietly behind her.

‘Hey,’ she said in a low voice, partly so as not to wake the children, but also in deference to the sombre mood in the house. She pulled off her beanie and automatically twisted her hair into the topknot, seeing that they had managed only coffee; the island was spotlessly clean and tidy.

Hanna was dressed but Max was still in his pyjamas, and his eyes followed his partner as she got up to rinse her cup.

‘Bell, thank you for coming so early. I really appreciate it.’ Hanna’s poise was in stark contrast to the sucker-punched disbelief of last night, but Bell could see the effort it was taking her just to present this veneer. Her mouth was pulled down at the corners, the sinews strained in her neck.

‘It’s the very least I could do. How are you both?’

She made a point of including Max in the question, seeing that Hanna was using manners as a mask, and he answered her with a weary nod that told her more in its fragile silence than words would.

‘Did you manage to sleep at all?’

A silence followed; they seemed to be deferring to each other to answer.

‘Not really,’ Max said finally. His voice, usually spry and infused with an untold joke, was flat and heavy.

‘No.’ She bit her lip, watching as Hanna cleaned the coffee cup vigorously before immediately drying it and returning it to the cupboard. Bell wasn’t sure any implement in this kitchen had ever been returned to its home without first spending at least four days on the draining board. She watched as Hanna stood, unseeing, at the cabinet for a moment, her shoulders pitched a good two inches above their usual setting, before turning around with possibly the most implausible smile Bell had ever seen – but one of the bravest.