‘I’ve just had a hard time falling asleep.’

She shook the jar like a rattle.

He gritted his teeth in silence.

‘I don’t understand what’s with you.’

‘Just leave me alone.’

‘Look at me. I’m home. Everything went well.’

‘Yes.’

‘It went well, Håkan.’

He nodded and she found his hand and squeezed it. It was warm and damp and she held it until he slowly pulled it away. He crossed his arms and stared at the wall, so she got up. She studied him for a minute. Then she gathered up the jars and left the room.

*

She poured yoghurt into a bowl she had placed on the table in front of the little girl.

‘And we have to leave it alone. So you can’t go in there. You can’t go in and look at it.’

‘Should we give it pine cones?’

‘You think so?’

‘Pine cones and squash.’

‘Eat your food.’

‘But I’m not hungry.’

‘Did you already eat? What time is it anyway? All right. So what would you like to do, would you like to watch TV?’

The little girl said nothing; she was staring at the stairs. Diana turned around and saw him coming down the steps with one hand on the banister. His penis, dangling between his legs, was brown, as though it had been transplanted from a person with different pigmentation.

He shuffled across the kitchen floor like a somnambulist. When Diana realised he was heading for her, she straightened up and took a step back and several seconds ticked by before she raised her arms and hugged him back.

Lennart drove across the ling bridge…

Lennart drove across the long bridge on a morning when the clouds were so low the top of the mountain looming up on the other side of the sound looked completely flat. The road stretched into a blurred haze and the silhouettes of rocky skerries out at sea glided in and out of view like dark trawlers.

Grete’s house slowly appeared in solitary magnificence far out on a plain. It was an old house with pointy gables. The octagonal addition on one side of it looked like a small chapel. At the top of the tar-papered roof lantern was a spire of at least three feet. Stands of hogweed grew in the garden and if you focused on them, the house seemed to shrink to fairy-tale size.

He parked behind the motorhome, opened the door and dragged himself out. Swaths of raw moisture in the air. A tractor with a front bucket. An old Mercedes hidden under a tarpaulin partly blown off by the wind.

Frode was standing on the porch. Jaundiced and unshaven, with his hands deep in the pockets of his raincoat. His hair had retreated into a funny little tuft of wool on his forehead. The old hare was crouching by his feet, staring at the invisible world with the frozen whites of its eyes.