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that way. Can’t you sing for me, Little One? Can’t you sing for me like you did before?’
    Lennart cleared his throat and sang an A. The note bounced off the room’s bare cement walls, and he could hear for himself that it wasn’t absolutely pure. In the same way that you can’t just pick up a pen and draw the picture you have in your head—unless you have a talent for that kind of thing—his voice couldn’t produce the perfect pitch he could hear inside his head. But it was close enough.
    The girl’s mouth opened and Lennart held the note, moving so that his mouth was aligned with hers, sending his own imperfect note into her as he looked into her eyes. She began to tremble in his hands. No, not tremble. Vibrate. Something happened to the sound inside the room, and his note sounded different. He was running out of breath, and it was only when his own note began to fade out that he realised what had happened. The girl had responded with an A an octave lower. It ought to be impossible for a small child to produce such a low note, and the sound was slightly alarming. The girl was using her body like a sound box; she was like a purring cat, emitting a pure note in a register which should have been inaccessible to her.
    When Lennart fell silent so did the girl, and her body stopped vibrating. He held her close and kissed her cheek as tears welled in his eyes. He whispered in her ear, ‘I almost thought I’d imagined the whole thing, Little One. Now I know different. Are you hungry?’
    He held her in front of him again. There was nothing in her face to indicate a desire for anything. He squeezed her chest tentatively. He just couldn’t understand how she had been able to produce such a low note. The closest he could come up with was a purring cat, using its entire body as a sound box. But cats don’t purr in sine waves.
    You are a gift. You have been given to me.
    Lennart checked the girl’s nappy, put her back down and tucked her in. Then he went off to the storeroom to dig out Jerry’s old cot.

For the first few days after Lennart came home with the baby, Laila waited for the knock on the door, the phone call, the uniformed men forcing their way into the house and asking questions before carting her off to a cell, possibly a padded one.
    After a week she began to relax. On the few occasions when someone did ring, she still picked up the receiver cautiously, as if she were afraid of what was on the other end, but she was gradually beginning to accept that nobody was coming for the child.
    Lennart spent a lot of time down in the cellar and, even though Laila was glad he had less energy to spare for stomping around in a bad mood, it still gnawed at her. She was constantly aware of the child’s presence, and kept wondering what Lennart was actually doing. He had never been particularly fond of children.
    Despite the fact that it hurt her knee—these days more metal parts than organic tissue—she made her way down the cellar steps now and again to see how the child was getting on. Lennart received her politely, while his body language made it clear that she was disturbing them.
    She wasn’t allowed to speak in the room. If she sat down, Lennart would place his forefinger on his lips and shush her as soon as she tried to say something. His explanation was that this time the child was not to be ‘talked to pieces’.
    Sometimes when she opened the door leading to the cellar she heard notes. Scales. Every time she just stood there, dumbstruck.Lennart’s tenor blending with another, higher voice, as clear as water, tinkling like glass. The child’s voice. She had never heard anything like it, never heard tell of anything like it.
    But still. Still.
    It was a child they were dealing with here. A child shouldn’t be lying in a cellar with scale exercises as its only source of stimulation.
    Lennart still had quite a lot of work as a songwriter, and sometimes his presence was required in the studio when songs were