Not knowing was so much easier. Hiding behind that. Strangely enough, she hadn’t given her own behaviour any thought. Not discussed it with herself, which she normally made sure to do as soon as she had an internal conflict that posed a threat to her conscience. After all, Susso and she had been practically joined at the hip all throughout their teens.

What Gudrun had told her in the park didn’t make any sense. So it was after Susso had killed her website that she had started acting oddly. She figured it should have been the other way around. That she should have snapped back in. Besides, she had a hard time imagining Susso isolating herself like that.

But what did she really know?

They hadn’t talked to each other in over ten years.

My God, could that really be right?

Why hadn’t she been there for her? Talked to her? She knew why. Susso didn’t fit into her life. That was the bitter truth. She had rejected her and when she put that into words, she was instantly filled with self-reproach that stung so badly it must have been gathering force at the back of her mind for years.

She tossed the school assignment back in the box and closed it. The front door had squeaked open and the hallway was full of Kiruna’s chirping and Håkan’s rumbling. He told the girl to take off her boots and then told her to put them away neatly. Both of them!

Diana went downstairs, still dazed by the feelings that had emanated from the box like swamp gas. The little girl wrapped her arms around her leg and clung on. Her hair was dark and she smelled like a wet little animal. Diana asked if the dragon had flown away and the little girl shook her head. The dragon was still there and she had gone on it twice. And she had found birds lying on the ground.

‘Fieldfares,’ Håkan said. ‘Chicks. They’re everywhere.’

‘Dead?’

‘I didn’t perform a clinical examination. But they were on their backs in the grass, and none of them responded when spoken to.’

Diana looked at the little girl.

‘They jump out of their nests too soon. Before they can fly.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. They just do.’

* The girls’ nicknames mean ‘ant’ and ‘herring’ respectively, and are a play on their surnames.

Lennart hung the headlamp…

Lennart hung the headlamp around his neck and in the same movement removed his glasses and handed them to Abraham, who was staring at his eyes with unveiled curiosity.

The bunker had been blasted into the mountainside; the imposing entrance was neatly cut. Made of poured concrete now streaked with white lines of limestone tears. At the top of the pile of excavated rubble blocking the entrance was a crevice that had been stoppered with a tangle of rusty-brown barbed wire.