‘Have you ever driven him?’

Elias shook his head.

‘What about the girl?’

‘Huh?’

‘Fanny. Has she driven him?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

Lennart slammed the doors shut and walked around the vehicle. A yellowed newspaper lay on the front seat. An evening paper. He took it out and was eyeing it when Fanny approached with the toddler on her arm. The little boy wore a hat that shadowed one of his eyes, the skin around his mouth was jaundiced and his eyes were darting around as though he’d never been outside before.

Elias installed the car seat in the front cab. It was a struggle. His trousers sagged under his wide behind, revealing the crack between his white buttocks. A belt-clip keychain snaked from his wallet, which was shoved deep into his back pocket, in under his shirt.

Now Rune was walking toward them. He moved his feet slowly. A bent little creature in a chequered shirt that hung down to his knees. Lennart backed away and when the old man with the dead, distorted face strode past, he noticed there were still tufts of fur in his ears.

He didn’t want to ride in the back; he put his gloved paws on the front seat as if to show that he was going to sit there, in that exact spot. But Fanny managed to persuade him that it would be better if he sat in the back. She stroked his luscious silver mane and looked in through the mask’s eyeholes. Let’s do it that way, okay? she coaxed.

When she had helped the old man into the back of the van, she shut one of the doors and gave him a smile and some encouraging words before closing the other. Then she jumped up next to the little boy in the front seat.

Lennart watched the van as it slowly reversed out of the driveway. Then he lumbered back across the meadow.

Abraham was standing outside the motorhome with the milky-eyed hare on a lead. His hood was up and his face grim. Lennart stomped up the stairs, pulled the curtain aside and climbed into the seat next to Ingvill, who was behind the wheel, waiting with her foot on the gas pedal.

*

When they reached the E4 motorway, the skies suddenly opened; the rain continued to beat down on them with undiminished force mile after mile. The three wipers sweeping across the windscreen only managed to keep the lower half clear of water, tirelessly drawing wavy triptychs that instantly filled with new droplets. Lennart looked out at the dark spruce tree palisade. Clearcuts with solitary, scraggly pine trees rising from the broken terrain. Gravel pits and desolate sandy heaths. Game fences rushing past. One trampoline after another in garden after garden. Ingvill was silent like an animal and he was too.

Diana ended up setting off later…