But that was wishful thinking. Of course it was that squirrel. The way it was going at it. When it sat still, she could only guess at its location, and it often turned out she had been off by quite a bit. It had a baffling ability of popping up where she least expected and after a while, she started wondering if it had tricked her into a weird game of hide-and-seek it might be risky to pull out of. It never seemed to tire of it; in the end, she walked over to the pine trees, which immediately stopped moving. She couldn’t see the squirrel, but she knew it was watching her.

‘You’re coming with me!’

Talking to it felt unpleasant; maybe that’s why she had sounded so brusque. She repeated her command, but in a gentler tone. Still fighting off the mosquitoes, she took a few steps to one side to try to catch a glimpse of the creature hiding up there.

‘We’re going to go get Susso.’

She figured Susso’s name would serve as a watchword. But nothing happened. A gust of wind from the river hissed through the birch trees. The pine trees grew anxious; when shadows dappled their bark, a pattern of golden-red shards appeared on their trunks.

She walked down toward the water. The chairs they had carried out onto the jetty were still there. One of them had toppled over. She righted it and after a moment’s hesitation, sat down on it. Having her back toward the house was unpleasant, but she forced herself to stay. A glass cylinder glinted in the gap between two of the jetty’s wooden boards. A mosquito repellent stick. She picked it up, undid the cap and drew lines across her forehead and neck. Closed one eye tight against the sinking ball of the sun and gazed out across the river with the other.

*

She found boiled new potatoes in a plastic bag in the fridge, wrapped in blackish-green strings of dill that looked like wet hair. She sat down at the kitchen table and ate the potatoes straight out of the bag.

‘I guess I have to stay then.’

‘Can you?’

‘Going home seems stupid.’

‘Are you going home?’

She swallowed before replying.

‘No, I said going home seems stupid.’

‘Yes.’

After the conversation with Gudrun, she wrote to her mother that she wouldn’t be back that night. The reply came in the form of a picture of Kiruna’s face, closed in sleep. Her round cheek was sharply lit by the flash.