‘And it’s why you were sad up there just now?’

She shrugged, biting her lip. ‘Sometimes it just hits me. Times like this, really – celebrations, anniversaries, Christmas . . . Most of the time I’m okay.’

He stared at his beer. ‘I’m sorry. You seem very young to have gone through something like that.’

‘So was Jack.’ She glanced at him, but something in his eyes made her hold his gaze. What was she seeing? Sympathy? Compassion? Understanding? Empathy? There was something intangible about him that went beyond the solitary, something ‘held back’, an invisible cloak of vulnerability draped over his shoulders. ‘. . . Have you ever lost someone?’

It was a long moment before he answered and she realized what it was that she saw in him. Pain. ‘Everyone. There was an accident and . . . my wife, child, father . . . I lost them all.’

She stared at him, open-mouthed, words stoppered in her throat. None would do. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered finally. ‘Emil, that’s –’

His eyes flashed to her again as he heard his name in her voice.

‘I just don’t know what to say.’

‘No one ever does,’ he said, shrugging his eyebrows with a tired smile, and she saw how the loss curled up in him like a sleeping mouse. She felt a swipe of guilt, for his was surely the greater: his wife, child, father . . . it was as multi-layered as a peony, a blade on every petal. ‘Words aren’t enough.’

He was right – they weren’t. Words didn’t bring back souls that had taken flight; they weren’t arms that could hold her in the night.

They let a silence envelop them, the distant beat from the Yacht Hotel dance floor drifting over like mist on the water. Time was beginning to lose its edges. It was well after midnight now, the sky still a brilliant red as though set to pause on a dazzling sunset, a perpetual dusk.

‘Flares,’ he murmured, looking at a point beyond her head.

She looked back over her shoulder, just as a burst of red smoke painted the sky. It was too light for fireworks to work their magic, but it was something, a last spectacle to keep the party spirit going. ‘Oh wow.’

‘You can see them better from here, if you want,’ he said, shifting up the bench seat slightly as explosion after explosion rocked the archipelago. Red, purple, green.

His gaze was fixed on the sky as she came over and sat down beside him, wordlessly. Still, she immediately felt the shift at the new proximity. They weren’t touching but she could feel his body heat as they watched the light show, two strangers, alone together on the shortest night of the year – both sad, both broken, both a bit drunk.

She had finished her beer, the bottle sitting empty and light in her hands. It was her cue to go, soon.

‘I love Midsommar,’ he murmured, before she could stir, as though sensing her thoughts. ‘As a boy, I thought it was better than Christmas.’