Maja said something funny. He could hear himself laughing on the film. He smiled. He could see the rain on the car window behind her. The empty trees. The sky, empty. It looked so miserable out there, on the other side of the car windows. Gray. Black. Damp. Rotten. A sky that was gray or black or red like… like blood. No. Nasty. The sky is a big, nasty hole that’s bigger than anything else, he thought, and he squeezed the ball hard in his hand. Things fall from the heavens that we are afraid of, run away from, hide from. The heavens are empty, but rain comes down from there and we can’t get away from that, and that’s why heaven is just a place on earth. Heaven is a place on earth, he thought again. He used to think about that when he was a child. Uncle had come to him when he’d been crying. The light had been out, and Uncle had asked him various things and then gone away. But later, he’d come back again.

It had hurt so much. But who had it been? Had it been Dad? Or Uncle? Uncle had comforted him afterward.

Comforted him so often.

He turned to the television again. It had been warm and cozy in the car. He’d felt warm as he shot the film. He could hear the radio as well. Then came the voice, and a swear word. The child had heard it. Maja. Maja said that the man on the radio has used a bad word.

Yes indeed. It was a very bad word.

What a nice ball you have, Maja. Show it to me.

Winter was sitting on the floor by the door in the long, narrow hall with his legs spread out, and he was rolling the ball to Elsa, who was sitting at the other end. He managed to roll the ball all the way to Elsa, but she couldn’t roll it all the way back again. He stood up and sat down again a bit nearer.

“Ball stupid,” Elsa said.

“It’s easier now,” he said, and rolled it to her again.

“The ball, the ball!” she shouted as she succeeded in rolling it all the way to him. “The ball, Daddy!”

“Here it comes,” he said, rolling it back to her.

Elsa was asleep when Angela got home after her evening shift. A long day on the ward. Morning shift. A short rest. Evening shift. He heard the elevator clattering up to the landing outside, and opened the door before she had even reached it.

“I heard the elevator.”

“So did everybody else for miles around.” She took off her raincoat and put it on a hanger ready for transportation to the bathroom. “That elevator should have been retired thirty years ago.” She took off her boots. “It’s scandalous that the poor thing has to keep on working.”

“But Elsa likes Ella being here and working for us,” said Winter.

Ella Vator was Elsa’s name. Just think, all these years I’ve lived here and traveled up and down in this elevator without knowing its name, Winter had thought when Elsa christened the old girl. Ella Vator.

“How did it go today?” said Angela, heading for the kitchen.

“Another incident at the nursery school,” he said, following her.

“What this time?”

“I think it was the same little boy as before who ran off through the bushes, but this time he got out.”

“Got out? Where? Who?”

“August, I think his name is. Do you know who that is?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“There was a hole in the wire fence, and he got out into the street.”

“Oh my God.”

“I managed to catch up with him before anything happened.”

“How the hell could there be a hole in the fence?”

“Rusted away.”

“Oh my God,” she said again. “What are we going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are we going to do about Elsa? You don’t think I’m going to leave her there when there’s a hole in the fence leading out onto one of northern Europe ’s busiest roads?” She looked at him and raised a hand. “It’s like a hole straight into the cruel world outside.”

“They’ve fixed it.”

“How do you know?”

“I checked.” He smiled. “This afternoon.”

“Have they replaced the whole fence?”

“It looks like it.”

“Looks? Are you not as worried as I am?”

“I called the lady in charge, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Well, I’m going to get through.”

She marched over to the telephone and called one of the numbers on a Post-it note stuck onto the refrigerator.

Angela bit his knuckle when she felt that he was as close as she was. He heard a spring complaining in the mattress underneath them, a noise that could in fact have come from Ella on the landing, but he didn’t think of that until afterward.

They lay still in the silence.

“Could you get me some water, please?” she asked eventually.

He got up and went to the kitchen. Rain was pattering on the window overlooking the courtyard. The wall clock showed a quarter past midnight. He poured a glass of water for Angela and opened a Hof for himself.

“You won’t be able to sleep now,” she said, as he drank the beer on the edge of the bed.

“Who said anything about sleeping?”

“I can’t come and go as I please like you,” she said. “I have strict working hours.”

“I can be creative at any time of day or night,” he said.

She took a drink of water and put the glass down on the wooden floor that seemed to gleam in the glow coming in from the street lighting outside. A bus could be heard driving past, tires on water. Then another vehicle. No ambulance at the moment, thank the Lord. A voice perhaps, but it could also have been a bird, hoarse from having stayed too long in the North.

That thought triggered another: Have we stayed here too long? Isn’t it time we moved out of this stone city?

She looked at him. I haven’t brought it up with him again. Perhaps that’s because I no longer want to move away myself. You can lead a good life in Gothenburg. We are not country people. Elsa isn’t complaining. She’s even made friends with somebody on our floor. The fence around the nursery school has been mended. We can always rent a house in the country for the summer.

She looked again at Erik, who seemed to be lost in thought. Things between us are better now than they used to be, a year or so ago. I didn’t know for certain then. I didn’t know for certain for some time. I don’t think he knew for certain either.

We could have been in different worlds. I could have been in heaven, and Erik here on earth. I think I’d have gone to heaven. I’m not sure about him. Ha!

I’ve forgotten about most of the experience. It was just bad luck.

She thought about what had happened during the months before Elsa was born. When she had been kidnapped by a murderer. How she had been kept in his apartment. What thoughts had gone through her mind.

I don’t think he ever intended to hurt me.

Things are different now. It’s good. This is a good time to be on earth. A good place.

She heard another noise from the street down below, a brittle sort of noise.

“A penny for your thoughts,” she said to Erik, who was still sitting in the same position with an introspective look on his face, which she could make out, even in the half light.

He looked at her.

“Nothing,” he said.

“I was thinking that we have it pretty good, you and me,” she said.

“Hmm.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“Hmm.”

She grabbed a pillow and threw it at him, and he ducked.

“Elsa will wake up if we start fighting,” he said, putting down his bottle of beer and throwing his pillow, which thudded into the wall behind her and knocked a magazine off her bedside table.

“Try this on for size,” she said, hurling his pillow back at him. He saw it coming.

“We actually found a little decomposing pile of newspapers outside the entrance,” said Bergenhem, the first time he’d spoken at the morning meeting. “It was underneath an even more unpleasant pile of leaves.”