‘Well, you got it your way. I have no husband and soon I won’t have a child either.’

‘I promise you I’ll never let them take her.’

‘Now we’re both at rock bottom. Just like the old days. You’ve dragged me down into your crap.’

‘I didn’t come looking for you.’

‘Goddamn it, Susso. Go fuck yourself.’

Susso put her feet down so Diana could pass. She pushed the curtain aside and looked out the window. The shadows from the cumulus clouds above Kiirunavaara had absorbed the mountain’s compact darkness and smeared it out in long tentacles, reaching in across the Bolagsområdet neighbourhood toward the town centre. Just below the hotel was a small park. In it rose the sculpture called Talande Tecken. A mining pick casting an ominously long and thin shadow across the stones. The fountain was a circle with a pipe in the middle from which water spurted out in iridescent sectors that evoked the streaks of an iris. She hadn’t known the fountain resembled an eye. Because she had never seen it from above before.

‘I’ve never been here before,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘At Ferrum.’

‘It’s called memory lapses,’ Susso said. ‘I assure you we’ve been here several times.’

‘I mean at the hotel. In a room.’

Susso peered at her, waiting for her to go on.

‘Isn’t that weird?’

‘Not really.’

‘All right, but it feels weird.’

She lay down on the bed, with her back against the headboard.

‘Remember that time we went to Laguna and started laughing at the man who worked there. Or maybe not at him, maybe more at the entire situation. Remember that?’

‘That we went to Laguna?’

‘You have to. We laughed so hard we almost died. You even wet yourself.’

‘I did?’

Diana nodded.

Susso shook her head.

‘I don’t remember as much as you do, Diana.’

‘Of course you do. You just remember different things. I’ve noticed the same thing with Håkan. I remember things from when Kiruna was little that he has no recollection of. And vice versa. And by the way, there’s a hole in your sock.’

Susso wiggled her toes.

‘They’re your socks.’

Diana was quiet for a while, studying Susso’s foot.

‘Is it going to pass?’

‘Not unless you darn it.’

‘I mean with Håkan.’

‘He’s probably permanently changed. If you ask me.’

‘Maybe it would be better, in the long run, if he owned up to what he did. If he faced the consequences.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It would be easier to live with, I reckon. Afterwards.’

Susso shook her head.

‘That’s no way to think. When they’re involved,’ she said, pointing to the top of the wardrobe, ‘different rules apply. You just have to accept it.’

‘He said he was over it.’

‘What?’

‘That I cheated on him.’