Ipa was more or less constantly on the phone. Usually in rural Finnish. On one occasion, she spoke Sami, Northern Sami; that was the one time she used the white phone. Shimmering like mother-of-pearl, with a fine crack branching out across the back.

Layer upon layer of scars criss-crossed the hand she used to operate the gear stick. Her skin had healed imaginatively, with plant-like patience after being bitten to shreds again and again. The tip of her pinkie was missing and there was no nail.

The woman in the back was completely silent. Her head was leaned against the window and she hadn’t moved in a very long time. He reached back and pushed on her leg. He had to push a few times before she shifted and crossed her arms. Her eyes remained closed. A trickle of bloody ooze had found its way out from under the taped-on skirt and dried on her cheek.

‘A gift,’ Ipa said and when he showed no interest in discussing it, she asked: ‘What kind of gift?’

‘Susso Myrén, if you know who that is.’

She shot him a quick glance.

‘That’s her?’

He nodded.

Ipa said nothing more about it; she didn’t say anything else at all, but later, when they had stopped at a rest spot, he overheard her talking about the gift and she was making an effort to keep her voice down. She was sitting on a picnic table with her legs spread wide and her boots on the bench. A phone in one hand and a phone in the other. Karhuntappaja, she said and then she repeated the word. Karhuntappaja. She was asked a number of questions she couldn’t answer. En tiedä, she said. Ei. Ei.

He walked away. On the other side of the road was a nightblue lake and beyond that loomed the distant hills of a mountain range. Ipa had helped Susso out of and back into the car, probably so she could take a piss, and now she was heading toward him.

‘What happened to her eye?’ she said, squinting at him with one eye as if to illustrate her question.

In Varangerbotn, Diana turned into an Esso…

In Varangerbotn, Diana turned into an Esso petrol station and filled the car up; then she went into the shop and locked herself in the bathroom. She needed to pee, but also to hide in a windowless room where no one could watch her. The bathroom was a poorly cleaned cell without any decorative elements whatsoever. The only thing to rest your eyes on was a broken tile; she stared at it. Then her eyes moved on to the square light switch, which had yellowed against the white wall. It felt like her consciousness was fracturing.