Bell grabbed her own bag – a Sandqvist rolled backpack – and did another visual sweep of the room. It was as well Max was coming on afterwards, as they had no doubt forgotten half of what they needed and brought double of what they didn’t.

She grabbed the electric scooter she’d left rather naughtily propped up in the hall – they weren’t supposed to be taken into private premises, but she hadn’t been able to risk someone else taking it. There were far fewer left lying around in the Ostermalm district, and there wasn’t room for the entire family and their luggage and her in the car. She pulled the front door shut behind her. Poor Max was attempting to close the boot, only for it to bounce off the bulging contents within. It took three attempts and all his body weight before it finally clicked shut.

‘I’ll see you down there,’ she said cheerily, stepping onto the board and scooting past them all, but no one noticed. Linus was back on his screen again, head bent at that pronounced angle that was no doubt going to make chiropractors rich in the coming generation, and the girls were too busy fighting over a Pippi Longstocking doll to see her go. Hanna was staring into space, her mouth slightly parted as though she was watching television on the windscreen.

Bell turned around the corner, happy to have a few precious minutes to herself – she sensed there wasn’t going to be any let-up for the next four days – and let the breeze whistle around her neck as she zipped easily through the streets. Many families had left already; the surplus of empty parking spaces was the signature of summer in the capital. The horse chestnut, alder and beech trees were bushy-headed and thronging with life, squirrels leaping from branch to branch; choirs of birds sang riotously, hidden by the leaves. Window boxes rippled with bold colours, tulips and lavender, and everyone walked with the slight bounce that came with warm, sunny days in the holidays. There were people everywhere – tourists sitting in cafes, students perched on low walls – but traffic was still light as she emerged from the residential streets and joined the main flow downtown.

Getting to the city’s beating heart took only four minutes by scooter but as she wove along the widening streets, it was like a chameleon changing colour – the same, but different. High street stores and commercial offices lining the avenues, museums and libraries replacing townhouses, playgrounds swapped for imperial bronze statues, gardens for parks; and around every corner, the sea, a glistening sliver of ice blue, like the ribbon round a wedding cake.

The Nybroviken port was a horseshoe-shaped basin, flanked on all sides by the city’s grandest luxury hotels. Seagulls wheeled overhead, cawing loudly, some roosting contentedly, others waddling heavily along the promenade like grey-suited businessmen with big bellies and their hands behind their backs. Fleets of white ferries nodded and bumped against the harbour walls, their gangplanks laid down like medieval drawbridges as passengers stepped aboard with bags, or sometimes just a newspaper. The earliest birds were already sitting on the open decks out back, sunning themselves and waiting patiently to be whisked to the archipelago.