The girl yanked the lead so hard the otter was pulled backward. It wanted to go into the ditch and stared at it longingly. It soon made another attempt but the girl was relentless. The lead went taut and the animal swayed on its hind legs.

‘Could you show us the way?’ Stava asked.

‘It’s that house,’ the girl replied. ‘The yellow one over there.’

‘Thank you,’ Stava said and pulled Anders along.

*

The house the girl had pointed to was older than the other houses in the village. The porch roof was crowned by an elegant spire and the brick well had both a roof and a shadoof.

An old man came around the corner. His grey hair fell in flowing tight curls down his shoulders and his beard was combed and glossy. He was dressed in a striped work smock and on his head was a stiff-crowned felt hat. A wolf trailed him.

Stava sprang an embrace on him and after letting him go, she tried to take his hands, but they slipped out of her grasp. He didn’t even want to look in the pillowcase she held open for him.

They followed him around the house to the backyard, where a party tent had been erected. Stava’s father walked up behind a woman and kissed her on the head. One of the woman’s eyes was covered by a large compress and she seemed drugged. She was staring at the grass with her mouth open. Anders stared at the grass too. Next to the kettle grill was a bottle of lighter fluid with no cap. A plastic lid with a round béarnaise imprint. Cutlery.

A man in a military jacket started heckling Stava in Finnish. His insults grew increasingly offensive until in the end, he got to his feet and picked up a beer can from the table. Stava managed to turn away; the can, which flew through the air with a tail of liquid behind it, clipped her shoulder.

The man started pushing her around and when she fell to the ground, he chased her around with kicks and poured abuse on her. Then he snatched the pillowcase out of her hands and looked in it.

‘Did you sold the car? Do you think that all now is okay?’

He fished a ring out of the bag and examined it. Then he dug out a rumpled wad of cash.

‘There’s more,’ Stava said, ‘we can get more! A lot of money. We can get a lot of money.’

‘Do you have a phone?’

She shook her head and he kicked out at her.

‘I have one. But it’s in the car.’

‘What car?’

‘It’s a Volvo. It’s his Volvo. But you can have it!’

He dropped the bag on the ground and sat down.

‘We have nowhere else to go.’