Mikkel has taken off the clothes she put on him that morning and is now sitting on the kitchen floor in nothing but underwear, playing with his cars. He doesn’t want to get dressed. He doesn’t want to go for a ride. The howl he lets out when she finally picks up his writhing body gets her adrenaline pumping until her hands shake uncontrollably. In the end she gives up her attempts to dress him and carries him to the car.

Thirty-nine minutes.

‘I don’t want to!’

Mikkel tries to twist out of his car seat. Their eyes tear up with frustration. His and hers. Only Tyra is calm. She is sitting quietly in her seat with Teddy in her lap, staring out the window. With a final effort, Aylin manages to buckle her son in, wrap the blanket from the back seat around his naked body and close the door on the primal scream that follows. Two breaths before she opens the driver-side door. As she climbs in behind the wheel, she realises their passports are still in the safe. A quick glance at her watch and for a moment her mind goes blank and she panics when she realises she can’t remember the code. Oh my God, I’m losing my mind, he’s right. Then her brain catches up and she opens the door again. Makes up a lie to buy the time she needs.

‘We’re going to go see Grandma and Grandpa,’ she says. ‘They have a surprise for you.’

The code is 1872. She repeats it like a mantra all the way upstairs, 1872, 1872 – please, dear God, let him not have changed the code. With trembling hands she manages to get the safe open on the second try. They’re sitting inside in a neat stack, held together with a rubber band. She quickly rips that off and puts Bo’s passport back. Just then she spots the cream-coloured leather jewellery box. She quickly pulls it out and empties it out onto the desk, snatching up the things that belong to her: birthday and Christmas presents from Bo, the gold bracelet her parents gave her when she graduated, the pearls she inherited from her grandmother, her grandfather’s old Rolex, shoving them into her jeans pockets and bra before starting to put the rest back. Then she stops herself. What does it matter now? With one last look at the mess, she runs back down the stairs.

*

When Aylin Ramnes once again climbs in behind the wheel six minutes later, sweat is running down her back and her heart is pounding so hard in her throat she has trouble swallowing. Without saying a word, she reverses out of the driveway much too fast and turns out onto the street, drives faster than she really dares to, sees the houses flash past and a neighbour stopping dead at the edge of the pavement, raising a fist in protest.