She dipped her head closer to him, speaking in a hushed tone. ‘Remember, he’s your dad and he loves you. A very sad thing happened to him and he was poorly for a long time, but all he wants is to get to know you. That’s all this is. And I’ll be here the whole time.’

‘Promise?’ Linus breathed.

‘Hope to die,’ she mouthed, crossing her heart again. She gripped his hand harder and, taking a long, deep breath, they walked in together.

Måns was standing motionless in the centre of the room, his long shadow in the window frame flattering his stooped stature.

‘Where is he?’ she asked him, more snappily than she had intended.

The old man looked back at her with a look of fluster and bewilderment. She suspected it wasn’t a familiar feeling for him; he seemed to ooze capability. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bell. I have absolutely no idea.’

Chapter Fourteen

The day passed quietly. Literally. Though Bell and Linus crept and whispered, not wanting to make an imprint on this new place of residence, the house seemed to breathe around them; other people’s stories were held in abeyance in every picture, table-top, chair. There were few photographs to identify the family who had built this house and inhabited it for five generations, but those that were around were old black-and-whites of long-ago scenes. The two of them peered at unrecognizable faces, trying to find Linus’s features in a young girl’s muddy squint into the sunlight, his gait in a boy’s stride as he walked away from the camera, the stern frown, caught off guard, of an older man fishing from a boat.

Måns’s embarrassed beseeching that they should make themselves at home whilst he located the absent host – and father – didn’t extend, they were sure, to skateboarding down the long, smooth corridors, though both she and Linus had caught each other’s eye and thought about it.

For a while, they had sat quietly in the bedroom – hers was next door to Linus’s, though not interconnecting – pretending to be interested in the old wooden and tin toys which had a retro charm to them, but little beyond that. Bell had flicked idly through the paperbacks in the bookcase whilst Linus dutifully sat on the floor, playing with an old red Corvette Matchbox car and building with the Lego bricks he’d found in a box – both of them waiting, braced, any second for the sound of footsteps on the boards and the door to open . . . But as the minutes turned to hours, their stiff manners had softened, both of them curling up on the bed for a quick nap, the emotional anticipation of the day having drained them.

Finally, boredom had propelled them into leaving the room and exploring the house. Timidly, they had crept from room to room, always knocking on the closed doors before peering in. There were eight bedrooms upstairs, and it was almost impossible to tell which were inhabited and which were for guests; all were sparsely decorated and restrained in content, as though to own anything more than was strictly necessary was infra dig.