Lennart had continued to move backward out of the room. He held his soaked arm helplessly pressed against his stomach as though it had been maimed. He looked around. His glasses were on the table. He put them on, grabbed the carrier bag with his wallet and car keys and strode toward the door. Then he turned around and switched the TV on. He turned the sound up as far as it would go; it was a newscast. He lumbered out into the hallway and left the door wide open behind him; when he reached the lift, he could still hear the sound of the TV. A young man and a young woman were found dead in a hotel room in Luleå on Thursday. The police suspect they had been using one or several new internet drugs, often a lethal combination.

He stepped into the lift and rode it down to the lobby. Passed the reception desk with his eyes rigidly fixed on the glass doors of the exit. He climbed into the sauna-like heat of the car and looked through the windscreen, which was stippled with crushed insects. Then he looked at the empty car seat. There were French fries on it, dried-up yellow sticks on the greasy cover. He picked one of the sticks up, put it in his mouth and chewed. Then he picked up another. Then he started the car and drove away.

Diana saw her through the window…

Diana saw her through the window. She came striding up the street at a brisk pace. The neighbour’s golden retriever, which lay slumped on their lawn, raised its head. Then it got up. But it didn’t bark. Instead it bolted, around the corner. In that moment, when she saw Susso approaching their house with the squirrel like some kind of Japanese pocket monster on her shoulder, she was overcome with conflicting emotions. No one else in the entire world could help and that made her want to hug Susso, hard, as though she’d been lost in the wilderness and against all odds had run into her best friend in a four-by-four with GPS. But she also wanted to yell at her. Hit her, actually. Not least for what she had told her about Håkan. The way she had told her. Like she was talking about some randomer. Like she didn’t get or care that it was Diana’s husband. And she was afraid in a way she hadn’t been before. Not of Susso, exactly, but of the warped reality and the dark context she was a part of. When she hurried to the door, she didn’t know if it was to open it or lock it.

She opened it, of course.

Susso stood there looking at her with her one dark eye, and the animal on her shoulder looked at her too. Its long, needle-like whiskers were pointing every which way like beams from a light source.