‘It means nothing. They always claim back what they give, and change their minds whenever they please, without warning, just like that. And even if it’s true, if they leave her alone from now on, and that’s the end of it. Who is it I’m getting back? It’s certainly not Susso.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘A child that disappears never comes back.’

‘Was he there?’

‘Who?!’

‘There’s no need to snap at me.’

‘Who do you mean?’

‘The cult leader.’

‘I don’t know, she didn’t say.’

He came over and sat next to me on the sofa.

‘When are they getting back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Then we’ll have to head over to the hospital and wait. They do have a café.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘Sure you do.’

*

When we left for the hospital, I was so nervous I forgot both my handbag and my phone in the flat and after going back up, I had trouble remembering what it was I was supposed to fetch; I drew a complete blank and I stood there in the hallway, head empty, for several long seconds before I managed to corral my thoughts.

We parked outside the main entrance and I called Diana because I wasn’t clear on whether they were going to the A&E entrance or somewhere else. It turned out they were already there. Diana met us in the lobby. Her shirt was dirty and her face shiny with perspiration.

‘They’re examining her,’ she said. ‘One of her eyes is damaged. Beyond repair.’

‘Beyond repair?’

She nodded.

‘I have to go get Kiruna,’ she said and left at such a high pace she had to pull up short at the sliding doors.

The cafeteria was deserted apart from an old man sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, talking loudly and unabashedly into his mobile phone. Roland and I sat next to each other on a bench in silence.

Half an hour later, I was allowed to go in and see her. She was asleep. At first, I thought they had shown me into the wrong room because I found it hard to believe it was her in the bed. A quarter of her face was hidden under a compress and she had a big bruise on her lip.

I quietly sat down on a chair in a corner of the room and it was a long time before I dared to look at her again. When I did, she was staring at me with her one eye. It made me flinch.

She didn’t say anything, just lay there, studying me, her eye filled with a cryptic darkness, exactly the way she had done lying on my chest thirty-five years ago. In the same hospital.