Diana pulled Kiruna closer, placing her between them like a shield. For some reason, she tore off her hat as well. Which the girl immediately wanted back; when Diana held it up, out of her reach, she started climbing on her.

‘This is Kiruna,’ she said.

The girl was given her hat back and pulled it down over her ears. Tilted her head back to look out from under the edge.

‘And how old are you?’ Gudrun said.

The little girl pressed herself against Diana, butting at her, rubbing the top of her head against her hip. Felt the phone in her pocket and immediately wanted it.

‘She’ll be five this summer,’ Diana said and fended off the little hand trying to get into her pocket. ‘In July.’

Gudrun nodded and Diana knew there was no way around it.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘How is Susso doing?’

She had used her professional voice. The solid doctor’s timbre that was about an octave lower.

‘Well,’ she replied. ‘If only I knew.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s moved away. Maybe you heard?’

‘No, but I haven’t seen her about in a long time, so I suppose I might have suspected. That she wasn’t here any more.’

‘You suspected.’

The old lady was cornering her. There was no question about it.

‘How about a cup of coffee?’ she said and nodded toward the brown hut that housed the park’s café. She put a hand on Gudrun’s shoulder to guide her, gently but firmly. She sent Kiruna off to the playground, which was under siege by a swarm of toddlers in hi-vis vests.

A couple of big bird dogs were stretched out on a rag rug by the hut. Their tails started wagging automatically when Diana went up to the counter, but only one of the dogs had the energy to lift its head up to look at her. Its jaw was chewing air.

She ordered coffee. And a juice box for the little girl. To avoid Gudrun’s level stare, she gazed off toward the black ridge of the mining mountain. She studied her wallet and her nails. The dogs’ water bowl was a clear plastic tub, wholesale packaging that had once held foam bananas; a leaf was floating in it; she could see its shadow moving across the bottom of the tub like a flatfish.

She carried the steaming plastic cups over to the wooden benches on the edge of the circle where they made a skating rink in the winter. The goats brayed dejectedly from inside their shed; the shrubberies around them were full of twittering bramblings. A child suddenly hollered shrilly over by the playground. Ship ahoy! Ship ahoy!

‘Now tell me,’ she said and sipped her coffee.

Gudrun was cradling her cup in her hands, looking down at the gravel.

‘I don’t know how much you know about what happened to us.’

‘Only what I read in the papers, actually.’