He wasn’t at all sure that the woman in front of him could do that. He didn’t think that the child lying asleep in an uncomfortable position thought she was fun. She didn’t look very fun. He’d seen her before, when she had come to the nursery school and he’d been standing there, watching, or maybe just walking past. In fact he’d seen her several times.

He had seen the boy. And he’d seen a man who might have been the boy’s father.

He’d filmed the boy.

He’d filmed all of them.

The woman had paused outside Nordstan to smoke a cigarette. He didn’t like that. She had jerked her head back and looked as if she were drinking the smoke. He didn’t think that she lived with this child. It might have been her boy, but he wasn’t sure.

Somebody bumped into him, then somebody else. He couldn’t see the stroller, but then it came into view again. He wasn’t bothered about the woman at all, to be honest.

He’d followed them when they left the nursery school. He could come back for his car later.

The weather had turned colder, but he didn’t feel cold. He thought the boy was cold: The woman hadn’t tucked him in properly.

That didn’t matter so much now; it was warm indoors. She was standing in front of one of the department stores that sold everything imaginable. The doors were open and as wide as sluice gates, and people were flooding in and out like torrents of black water, out and in, out and in.

He saw the sculpture, the one he admired. It looked so… so free, so liberated. Sculpted figures flying down from the sky. They were free. They were flying.

He looked around and noticed that she’d parked the stroller by a counter where they sold perfume and hair lotion and lipstick and all that kind of stuff, or maybe it was clothes, but he hadn’t checked very carefully. Yes, it was clothes in fact, perfume was a bit farther on. He knew that really.

He could see the boy’s feet sticking out, or one of them at least. She seemed to be standing there, looking at the boy or maybe something on the floor next to the stroller. Maybe it didn’t make any difference to her. He moved to one side, out of the way of people flooding in and out. He was standing ten meters away from her. She didn’t see him. She moved the stroller closer to one of the counters. She looked around. He didn’t understand what she was doing.

She walked away. He saw her go to another counter, and then he lost sight of her. He waited. He could see the stroller, but nobody else was looking at it. He was standing guard while the woman was away, doing God only knows what.

He kept watch. People walking past no doubt thought the stroller belonged to somebody at one of the nearby counters. Maybe someone who worked there. He looked around but there was no sign of the woman. He checked his watch, but he didn’t know what time it had been when she left and so he didn’t know how long she’d been away.

He took a few paces toward the stroller, and then a few more.

When Ringmar got home he could feel that there was something seriously wrong. Even as he took his shoes off in the hall he could sense that the silence was heavier than usual. He hadn’t heard a silence like that before in this house. Or had he?

“Birgitta?”

No answer, and there was nobody there when he went to the kitchen, up the stairs, through the rooms. He didn’t turn on the lights upstairs as the neighbor’s illuminations were quite enough to fill the rooms with a yellow day-before-the-day-before-the-day-before-the-day glow.

Back downstairs he called his daughter’s mobile. She answered after the second ring.

“Hi Moa, it’s your dad here.”

She didn’t answer. Perhaps she’s nodding, he thought.

“Do you know where your mom is?”

“Yes.”

“I tried to call her but there was no reply, and when I got home there was nobody there.”

“Yes.”

“Where is she then? Did she go shopping?”

Ringmar could hear her rapid breathing.

“She’s gone away for a while.”

“Eh? Gone away? Where to? Why? What’s going on?”

That was a lot of questions, and she answered one of them: “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

“Where she’s gone.”

“Didn’t she say?”

“No.”

“What the hell is this?!” said Ringmar. I’d better sit down, he thought. “I don’t understand a goddamn thing,” he said. “Do you, Moa?”

She didn’t reply.

“Moa?” He could hear a noise in the background, as if something was moving fast. “Moa? Where are you?”

“I’m on the streetcar,” she said. “On my way home.”

Thank God for that, he thought.

“We can talk when I get there,” she said.

He waited on edge, opened a beer that he didn’t drink. The thousand lights in the neighbor’s garden suddenly started flashing. What the hell, he thought. They’re winking like a thousand yellow compound eyes, like stars sending messages down to earth. Pretty soon I’ll have to stop by and pass on an unambiguous message to that stupid bastard.

The front door opened. He went into the hall.

“It’s probably not all that bad,” was the first thing his daughter said. She took off her coat.

“What is going on?” asked Ringmar.

“Let’s go into the living room,” she said.

He trudged after her. They sat down on the sofa.

“Martin called,” she said.

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Why didn’t she talk to me first?”

“What do you understand, Dad?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? He wants to see her but under no circumstances does he want to see me.” He shook his head. “And she had to promise not to say anything to me.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” said Moa.

“When’s she coming back?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

“So he’s not that far away?” said Ringmar.

She didn’t answer. He couldn’t see her face, only her hair, which was speckled with the flashing light from the idiot’s garden.

“So he’s not that far away?” Ringmar said again.

“She’s not going to meet him,” Moa said eventually.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mom isn’t going to meet Martin,” said Moa.

“What do you know that I don’t know?”

“I don’t know much more than you do,” she said. “Mom called me and said that Martin had been in touch and she would have to go away for a short while.”

“But what the hell did he say, then? He must have said something that made her take off?!”

“I don’t know.”

“This is the kind of thing that happens to other people,” he said.

She said nothing.

“Aren’t you worried?” he asked.

She stood up.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Up to my room. Why?”

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he said. “I can see it in your face.”

“No,” she said. “I have to go to my room now. Vanna’s going to call me.”

He stood up, went to the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of beer, went back to the living room, and sat down on the sofa again. Birgitta didn’t have a mobile: If she did he could have left her a message, said something, done something. This is a situation I’ve never been in before. Is it a dream? Or is it something I’ve said? Something I’ve done? What have I done?

Why had Martin called? What had he said? What had he said to make Birgitta pack a bag and take off? Without telling her husband.

He took a swig of beer, and the illuminations outside continued to flash and twinkle. He looked out of the window and saw that some kind of portal with lights had been created outside the neighbor’s front door. That was new. He clutched the bottle in his hand and stood up. He saw his neighbor come out and turn around to admire his garden of light. Ringmar heard the phone ring and Moa’s voice when she answered. He waited for her to shout down to him, but she continued talking. Vanna, no doubt, a fellow student who wore flowery shirts. Would do well as a lawyer.