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the chart. No fresh start. It was sinking in.
Without you, what’s a summer without you…
    The world wasn’t ready. All he could do was accept that fact. A calmness bordering on physical numbness came over Lennart. He glanced at Laila. Her eyes were closed as she listened to Roland’s voice. The hint of a smile played on her lips.
    She’s listening to his voice and thinking about his cock.
    Laila opened her eyes and blinked. But it was too late. He had seen. Suddenly he felt his arm jerk. The crowbar swung in a wide arc and landed on Laila’s knee. She gasped and opened her mouth to scream.
    It had just happened, he had had no control over the movement; he didn’t feel he could be blamed for it at all. But then something changed. With Laila’s squeal of pain and surprise, Lennart stood up and raised the crowbar again. This time he knew exactly what he was doing. This time he took aim.
    He slammed the flat end of the crowbar down again, full force, on the same knee. There was a moist crunching sound and, as Lennart lowered the crowbar, blood began to trickle down Laila’s shin and every scrap of colour left her face. She tried to get up, but her leg gave way beneath her and she collapsed at his feet, holding up her hands to defend herself and whispering, ‘Please, please, no, no…’
    Lennart looked at the bleeding knee; a considerable quantity of blood had gathered under the skin, and only a thin trickle was escaping where the skin had broken. He spun the crowbar around half a turn and brought it down once more with the sharp end.
    This time things went well. The knee burst like a balloon filled with water, and the kneecap splintered to one side to release a cascade of blood, splashing all over Lennart’s legs, the garden table, the demolished porch step.
    Perhaps it was just as well that Laila stopped screaming and fainted at that point, otherwise Lennart might well have continued with the other knee. He had in fact realised what he was doing. He was putting an end to Laila’s running. An end to staying slim ‘for you and the audience’ and all those men waiting in the bushes.
    In order to make completely sure, he ought to smash the other knee as well. But as Lennart stood there looking down at his wife’s inert body, the kneecap that was no more than a mass of cartilage, splintered bone and blood, he decided that was probably enough.
    He would be proved right.

The room in the cellar had grown warmer and had reached a pleasant temperature, but the air was still damp, and the window up at ground level was covered in condensation. The girl was lying in her basket, gazing at the ceiling with big eyes. Lennart turned back the blankets and picked her up. She didn’t make a sound, didn’t react to the change in any way.
    He held the giraffe before her eyes, moving it back and forth. She followed it for a second, then went on staring straight ahead. Presumably she wasn’t blind. Lennart clicked his fingers loudly right next to her ear and her forehead wrinkled a fraction. Not deaf either. But she was so curiously…closed off.
    What’s happened to her?
    He felt the girl was a little older than he had first thought, perhaps two months old. In two months a person can experience enough to instinctively formulate a strategy for survival. Perhaps the girl’s strategy had been to make herself invisible. Not to be seen, not to be heard, not to make any demands.
    Clearly the strategy hadn’t worked. She had been dumped in the forest, and she would be lying there still if Lennart hadn’t happened to be passing. He held her gently, looked into her bottomless eyes and talked to her.
    ‘You’re safe now, Little One. You don’t have to be afraid. I’ll look after you, Little One. When I heard you singing, it was as if…as if there was a chance. For me too. I’ve done bad things, you see, LittleOne. Things I regret, things I wish I could undo. And yet I keep on doing them. Out of habit. Things have just turned out