‘We have to climb out this window. Here. We’re going this way.’

She ripped down the curtain and helped Susso climb up. She was straddling the windowsill, looking down at the ground.

‘There’s stinging nettles.’

‘Jump!’

‘I’m barefoot.’

‘You have to jump.’

Diana more or less shoved her out the window and then stepped both feet up on the sill and jumped after her.

They ran up toward the trees, with the squirrel bounding ahead. Susso was struggling. She staggered and fell; several times, Diana had to pull on her to make her get back up.

They had passed the boom barrier when they heard the motorcycle behind them like an ominous cornet. Diana turned around and jogged backward a few steps; after establishing that the sound of the engine was unambiguously coming their way, she shouted at Susso to go faster.

They made it out onto the main road, but not all the way back to the car.

It was him, the man with the gold chains. He overtook them, slammed on the brakes, turned in behind the car and stopped. His dirt-stained bike growled, its mudguard trembling.

Diana had stopped. Her eyes searched for the squirrel. She had glimpsed it moments before, but it was nowhere to be seen now. Susso limped up behind her.

The man’s sweaty face had twisted into a grin. It was as though he was already enjoying the sadistic violence he was going to inflict on them. He tilted the motorcycle to lay it down on its side. But he never got off it.

He was looking at them, his gilded fists still around the handlebars, but there was no longer a grin on his face. After a while, he looked down at the ground. Then he suddenly turned his bike around and drove off. But not back toward the village; he went north. He leaned forward and went full throttle and his jacket inflated in the wind.

Susso was standing by the side of the road, rubbing her forehead; when Diana walked up to her, she waved her arms about angrily as if to ward off an attack by something she couldn’t see.

‘We’re going home.’

‘No! No!’

She stroked her back.

‘Come on.’

After getting her into the seat, she slammed the door shut, ran around the car, jumped in and seized Susso, who was on her way out. She put her hand flat against her cheek and turned her head to face her.

‘What’s with you? We’re going home now.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘What don’t you want?’

She couldn’t answer that question. She looked around in confusion and her fingers strayed to the patch covering her eye.

‘Don’t touch that,’ Diana said and started the engine.

The route home via Karesuando was shorter, but following the motorcycle didn’t sit right with her, so she made a U-turn and drove south, toward Pajala.

‘Where is he?’

‘Who?’