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wall.
    Ylva closed the door and looked around. The walls were plastered breeze blocks. The room was twenty square metres, max, just a small corner of the cellar.
    Ylva remembered all the pallets of building materials that had been left outside the house, waiting for the new owners. The Poles, who spoke very little Swedish, had tried to answer the questions from inquisitive neighbours.
    The cellar. They were going to do something in the cellar. Build a music studio, they thought.
    When he’d finished the story, Sanna lay there and traced the pattern on the wallpaper with her finger, as she usually did. She’d asked again when Mummy was coming home and Mike had felt almost guilty.
    ‘Am I not good enough?’
    He said it as a joke, but underlying the words was a hurt.
    ‘Mummy will be back soon. She just went out with some friends for a while. Grown-ups have to be allowed to play with their friends too, sometimes.’
    Mike thought he sounded false when he said that, but Sanna didn’t seem to react.
    Fifteen minutes later, he woke up and saw that she was asleep. He hoped that she’d fallen asleep before him, but had his doubts. Carefully, he raised himself up on one elbow. The bedsprings creaked and groaned under his weight but Sanna slept on.
    Mike left the bedroom door open. He recalled the feeling of horror when he’d woken up in total darkness as a child with no idea where he was. He didn’t want Sanna to have to go through the same thing.
    He went down to the kitchen, opened the fridge and looked at the contents without finding anything tempting. He went through the cupboards and was happy to discover a half-full bag of peanuts behind the cereal. He decided that he deserved them, as a brave and currently-as-good-as-single parent, and poured himself a whisky to go with them.
    Mike took the nuts and whisky into the sitting room, switched on the TV and watched the end of a film he’d already seen. It was better than he remembered and gave him an inkling of why his daughter always wanted to watch the same film.
    When the film had finished, he flicked through the channels without finding anything else to watch. He turned the TV off. There were no curtains in the sitting room and the blue glow of a television at this time of night might be misconstrued.
    He went to get his mobile phone. No missed calls or apologetic texts.
    It wasn’t fair that she hadn’t been in touch. After all, it hadn’t been definite that she was going out for the evening. She should have phoned to say whether she was coming home for supper or not.
    In the end, Mike decided to give her a ring. Officially to make sure that everything was okay and to insist she got a taxi home. Simple concern, he convinced himself, nothing more. He wasn’t calling because he was in any way worried that she might be fluttering her eyelashes at someone, or chewing her lip in that deliberately provocative way.
    Mike repeated to himself exactly what he was going to say before he picked up the phone.
    Just a bit worried. Thought you might call to say whether you were coming home for supper or not. No, no, she’s fast asleep. We had a nice evening, building towers. No trouble at all. I’m off to bed now. Can you try to be a bit quiet when you come in, and I’ll get up early in the morning and pop down to the shop for some fresh rolls. Have fun. And don’t forget to take a taxi home.
    But instead of extended ringing and then finally his wife’s voice, with a wall of loud music, laughter and happy shouts in the background, it went straight to voicemail. An automated voice told him which number he’d called and Mike pulled himself together.
    ‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said. ‘Your husband. Just thought I’d see how you’re getting on. I assume you’re out with people from work. Anyway, I’m off to bed now. Take a taxi home, please.I’ve had a drink and can’t drive. Sanna’s in bed. Big hug.’
    He hung up and immediately regretted leaving the message. It