She got back on the main road, floored it and had soon caught up with a lorry. Which irked her, because her empty stomach was starting to affect her mood. Soon her brain would stop working. She was tempted to overtake, but the straights were short and the right moment refused to occur. When the enormous equipage swerved out and touched the centre line only to then glide over into the oncoming lane, she took her foot off the gas pedal and had a vision of her immediate future, how she’d have to drag some overweight trucker out of a crumpled driver’s cabin. A flock of children were riding their bikes along the side of the road. He had swerved to avoid them. Each and every one of them had a helmet on. As if that would make any difference if a lorry driver were to receive a text message at the wrong moment. What were their parents thinking? Of other things or not at all?

After passing the signs with the town’s Swedish and Sami names, she briefly considered the OKQ8 petrol station, picturing a slimy fried hotdog, but she decided to push on, into the village that was under siege by men in hi-vis clothing who had jackhammered the pavements and blocked the streets with signs and diggers.

She rolled past the pizzeria. There was a supermarket further down the street. She pulled up outside and ran in for a yoghurt and a pear. It was an unexpectedly hard pear; she ended up having to hold it between her teeth until she started drooling.

By the barn with the three green doors, she turned off and followed a gravel road leading down to the river. There was no car outside; she was relieved to see that. She had brought pen and paper and even a plastic folder and a thumbtack. Tools to alleviate her guilty conscience.

She slammed the car door shut and looked up at the house. A red wooden house with a tin roof and richly mullioned windows that looked transplanted from an older house. Down by the river, a shed encircled by chicken wire. Nothing moving inside it, just weeds and bric-a-brac. The shaggy grass sprinkled with yellow buttercups. A snow sled propped against the railing of the front porch.

She thought she saw something moving in an upstairs window. The curtain twitched. As though the fabric were experiencing a spasm. She stood there for a long time, looking up toward the window, but the curtain didn’t move again.

She knocked and waited a few seconds before trying the door. It was open.

‘Hello?’

She stood motionless, listening.

‘Susso?’