The outdoor serving area was a fenced-in wooden deck with picnic tables and parasols; we sat down. We were the only guests. My feet were killing me; taking my shoes off made me moan with pleasure. Thankfully, a breeze was blowing from the river, which was, to my delight, actually visible between the houses. Roland went inside to buy a beer and I moved the ashtray, an upside-down terracotta pot on a saucer, to another table. A tower of beer crates loomed next to the door. A watering can with a rose hung on the wall and there was a number of planters, but they had nothing but dirt in them. Dry old dirt. And cigarette butts.

Roland nursed his bottle of beer, reading the paper with his hand spread over the pages the wind was trying to fold every which way.

‘When Jerker Persson went out to weed his garden early one morning, he made what can only be called an unusual discovery. A few feet away, Herman the camel was munching on his lawn.’

It was as though my ears were blocked.

‘A camel?’ I heard myself say.

He nodded.

‘In Boden.’

He read on and took a sip from his bottle.

‘Western Farm. Bloody stupid nonsense.’

Anders was kneeling on a…

Anders was kneeling on a cardboard box with galvanised staples in his hands. They were attaching chicken wire to a frame of pressure-treated wood held together with nail plates. It was going to be a kennel, Stava had told him. She was doing the carpentry. Every hammer blow made him blink.

Now she was sitting with her palm extended toward him. Instead of putting a staple in it, he grabbed it. She looked at him. Then she put the hammer down and wiped her forehead with her arm.

‘Anders,’ she said quietly.

In a fit of profound confusion, he pulled her strong, coarse little hand closer, clutching and bending over it as though he were praying; he stayed in that position until she pulled her hand away.

Then he straightened and began gathering up the staples that had scattered across the grass. Näcken, who was working on the other side of the frame, was watching him with a look of revulsion on his face.

He knew he looked horrible these days and from time to time, he would touch his own face. Feel his cheek, which was taut and weird.

The dog house was a red box with a tar-paper roof. The girl called Kerstin was rooting around in there and just then, she stuck her head out the little door and waved. The wave was for Ipa, who was approaching on a quad bike with sheets of rusty steel mesh trembling on its trailer.