He threw a pillow down on the floor and when my bottom had slid down onto it he moved in behind me and pressed his thumbs into my shoulders, pushing hard like I have taught him. It crackled like electricity in my head and a warmth that seemed magically curative branched out through my body.

‘Then maybe this might help?’ he mumbled.

‘I hardly think so, but it can’t hurt.’

A patient…

A patient. That was Diana’s immediate thought when she spotted the little old lady who closed the gate to the animal enclosure behind her and came waddling toward her. One in the endless procession of embittered faces she encountered at the hospital. No name came to her, so she simply shot the woman a polite smile before turning back to the laminated note on the cage.

‘Their eggs are white,’ she said, ‘and weigh approximately thirty grams. Hens often take good care of their chicks.’

Kiruna was a bit scared of the rooster strutting about on the other side of the fence, brandishing his silky-smooth feather swords over the hens that huddled in a corner, round balls of an unremarkable shade of brown. She disliked him because she knew he could crow terribly loudly and that there was no telling what would set him off. After he sauntered off to the other side of the cage, she dared to move in closer. She hooked her fingers into the wire fence and asked where the chicks were. Diana said she didn’t know. The girl felt they should go look in the henhouse.

‘We’re not allowed,’ Diana said and prodded the padlock, making it rattle. ‘It’s locked. And if the chicks are in there, we shouldn’t disturb them. They’re resting after their meal, like you do at nursery.’

The little old lady had stopped right next to them, unpleasantly close; Diana was just about to take Kiruna by the hand and lead her off to the shed the goats were filling with their braying when she realised this wasn’t a patient at all, this was Susso’s mother.

‘Oh my God, hi,’ she exclaimed. She was surprised, but above all mortified, which she tried to hide behind a stunned expression. Which Gudrun saw straight through. At least that was what it felt like when she met her eyes. Gudrun had called several times and left messages; Diana had planned to call her back, but had never got around to it, and now here they were, face to face.

Many of her old schoolmates’ parents came into the clinic from time to time and it often depressed her to see how frail they had become. But Gudrun looked more or less the same. Glamorous designer glasses and spiky hair with dyed tips. She wore a hooded jacket and trainers and was holding a Lindex bag.