The little girl was still asleep when Diana woke up. Her lips puffy like a rosy-cheeked cherub. It was past eight. Håkan’s side of the bed was empty. She pulled a jumper over her head, padded out into the hallway and opened the door to Kiruna’s room. He wasn’t there. She popped her head into the bathroom and continued down the stairs and had soon established that he was not in the house. Nor was he in the garage nor out back. Could he have gone to work? His holiday didn’t actually start until next week, or did she have that wrong? She went over to the busy wall planner and saw the line he had drawn in blue pen through his column, starting next week. But shouldn’t he have said something if he’d gone to work?

She went back up to their bedroom and picked up her phone from the window sill. No messages. She stood there for a while with the phone in her hand. Then she went downstairs and into the bathroom and whipped the shower curtain aside; thankfully, he wasn’t in there.

Now she could hear the sound of tiny feet from upstairs. Diana hurried up the stairs and intercepted the little girl on her way back to the bedroom with her nightgown fluttering behind her. She grabbed her arm hard.

‘What’s that in your hand?!’

She pried the little girl’s fingers open. A ring lay in the palm of her hand. Håkan’s wedding ring.

‘Where did you find this?’

The girl tried to wriggle free, refusing to speak.

‘Where did you get this?!’ she yelled and she yelled in a way she had promised herself never to yell at her child, a real social group 3 roar it was.

Kiruna backed up until her heels hit the wall. When she saw the look on the little girl’s face, she pulled herself together. She stared at the ring, as though she expected it to tell her where Håkan was, and why he had taken his wedding ring off.

‘Where was it?’

The little girl raised her arm and pointed.

‘Where?’

She followed the girl, who strolled into her room and pointed to one of the bedposts.

‘It was on top of that?’

She nodded.

Diana looked around the room. Then she snatched up the clothes strewn about the floor and dressed the little girl without a word; when the little girl resisted, she forced her arms and legs with relentlessly hard fingers.

*