‘You belong together. You’re miserable, Lennart, and it’s because the two of you belong together. Who are you without him? An aberration. A freak! Just like me, without Uksakka.’

‘It’s going to take time. It could take months.’

‘Then there’s no time to lose.’

Every time Anders tried…

Every time Anders tried to explain to her how he remembered things, or rather, how he didn’t remember them, how they were like white spots in his head, she just nodded at him. Almost imperceptibly, but like she knew what he meant, even though she couldn’t possibly; it really irked him. She just wanted to get rid of him. That much he had gathered. She wanted him to admit himself to the psych ward in Örebro.

A word she kept circling back to in these conversations was shock. She talked about shock as though it had taken over his body, consequently absolving him of any moral responsibility. It was the shock that had scared him into the car and made him drive all the way home after the wolf killed Geir. The police had calculated that it would have taken him approximately ten hours and that he had stopped for petrol in Örnsköldsvik; listening to their description of his journey was like listening to an account of what he had got up to during a monumental bender.

According to Johanna, there was nothing to be ashamed about. He had been through a horrific ordeal. The reason she underscored this was that a lot of people felt he should have intervened. A kick in the arse would probably have scared the wolf off. And the wound the beast had torn in Geir’s throat was probably shallow enough his life could have been saved. If he had tried. Instead of jumping in his car and hightailing it out of there. What thoughts had run through his mind during those ten hours?

None at all. It had been completely blank.

Pointing to the shock had made sense. Everyone knew shock made people act irrationally. Johanna had told him about a father who had dashed about on the motorway outside Fagersta, gathering up his dead child’s scattered body parts, shouting at people to help him so they could start putting the child back together. A completely ordinary father, stunned by shock.