HANNA

7.25 A.M.

Slowly, Hanna went down the stairs. The rest of the family was still sound asleep. Stoffe had come home late last night and couldn’t bear to talk about what had happened. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it on the phone earlier in the day, either. Hanna had had a hard time sleeping and finally she’d gone and lain down in the guest room to avoid hearing Stoffe’s snoring and to at least get a few hours of sleep before she had to get up and teach.

Soon she had to wake up Karl and Alice so that they wouldn’t be late to school; it wouldn’t look good and would draw unnecessary attention to them.

A slight feeling of nausea sat like a lump in her stomach. Several times she’d been up and thought she was going to vomit. She shuddered to think of the coming nights when Stoffe wouldn’t be sleeping at home; she felt unsafe without him. Or was it in fact the other way around? There was tightness across her chest.

She added an extra scoop of coffee and turned on the coffee maker. The sun was streaming in through the windows, and it was already warm.

The coffee dripped down into the pot, and she tried to think clearly. Looked out at the other houses in Solbyn. It looked so calm and peaceful. Just as normal. The morning fog lay like a white blanket over the fields. It’s bewitchingly beautiful, she thought, but then her eyes fell on the blue-and-white barricades, and the idyllic image burst like a balloon.

So close.

She couldn’t keep herself from wondering whether there was still blood on the ground.

Maybe it would feel better if she let in a little fresh air? She picked up the flowerpot with the pink plastic geranium in the window to take out the key to the terrace door, but it wasn’t there.

Hanna picked up the pot alongside to see whether perhaps she had put it in the wrong place, but there was nothing under that one either.

Her pulse raced. Last night? She must have put it back? True, she was careless, but she almost never misplaced the key. Especially not now, after what had happened. She remembered double-checking that everything was locked before they went to bed last night.

She pulled down the door handle. The terrace door opened with a creak.

‘Stoffe!’ she screamed. ‘Stoffe!’

Within a few seconds he came running downstairs in just boxer shorts and T-shirt. ‘What’s happening?’

‘The door. It was open, I remember that I locked it yesterday … The key is gone.’

Without a word he went up to the door, closed it, and looked out over the fields before he pulled the curtains, though they weren’t wide enough to cover the whole window. Then he walked firmly to the hall.

She followed like a shadow, incapable of doing anything.

Stoffe stumbled on the baby gym that was on the floor of the hall and swore. ‘Will you please get rid of these baby things?’

‘Sorry,’ she whispered. She had had neither the energy nor the time to remove them. But he was right, it was very stupid to leave them lying around.

The front door was unlocked, too. Hanna covered her mouth. ‘Stoffe, what is happening?’

He stared past her with glassy eyes.

‘I locked up yesterday. I know I locked up yesterday,’ she said, hearing that she was sounding hysterical. ‘Has someone been in here while we were asleep?’ Hanna tried to swallow, but felt her stomach turn. Tried to remember the night, if she had heard anything, or if that was just rationalisation.

She threw herself into the bathroom and leant over the toilet bowl, vomited down into the toilet until she was completely empty. But the nausea was still there.

Stoffe came up to her and hugged her hard. Kissed her on the head and stroked her hair. ‘Try to take it easy. I’m sure we’re just confused.’

She couldn’t stop shaking and let him hold her.