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on her own with the children in the flat, Ellen and Kalle had had their own rooms. Annika had slept in the living room. That hadn’t worked when Thomas moved back in. Kalle had had to share Ellen’s room, which he had taken as a personal insult.
    She looked over to her son’s bed.
    Should she tell them? What could she say? The truth? With a bit of a positive spin?
    Daddy’s gone missing in Africa and probably won’t be home on Monday. In fact, he may never come home so you’ll be able to move back into your own room, Kalle. That’ll be nice, won’t it?
    Or lie, to be kind?
    Daddy thought it was so exciting working in Africa that he decided to stay on a bit longer. Maybe we could all go and visit him some time. How about that?
    Ellen hugged Poppy (new Poppy: as the original had gone up in flames when the house had burned down), curled up into a ball and closed her eyes. ‘Sleep tight,’ Annika said, switching off her daughter’s bedside lamp.
    The living room was in semi-darkness. The lamps left by the last tenant glowed warm and yellow in the window alcoves. The television was on with the volume turned down. It looked like Leif G. W. Persson was talking on
Crimewatch
, a programme she usually tried to see. The blonde woman he was working with said something, then a recording started to play. The two presenters were walking among kilometres of files and recorded interviews. It must be the Palme archive, she thought, picking up her old mobile. No missed calls or texts.
    She sat down on the sofa with the phone in her hand, and stared at the wall behind Persson. Schyman and a mobile number she didn’t recognize, presumably Halenius, had been calling her non-stop on her work mobile since she’d left the Frog conference room. In the end she had switched it off. Almost no one knew the number to her personal mobile, just Thomas and the school, her friend Anne Snapphane and a few others, and it lay in her hand like a dead fish.
    In spite of the gloom, all the colours seemed clearer than usual. She could feel her pulse beating.
    What should she do? Should she tell? Could she tell? Was there anyone she
had
to tell? Her mum? Thomas’s mum? Should she go to Africa to search for him? But who would look after the children if she did? No, she couldn’t call her mum. Could she?
    She rubbed her face with her palms.
    Barbro would be upset. She’d feel sorry for herself. Everything would be so
difficult
. The conversation would end with Annika trying to comfort her and apologizing for burdening her with all this worry. Always assuming she wasn’t drunk. If she was, she wouldn’t get any sense out of her at all. Either way, it wouldn’t be a good conversation, and that wasn’t because of Thomas or Africa.
    Barbro had never forgiven Annika for not coming home for her sister Birgitta’s wedding. Birgitta had married Steven (who was as Swedish as you could get, in spite of his name) towards the end of the American presidential campaign, and Annika had neither wanted nor been able to abandon her new job as correspondent to go to a party in Hälleforsnäs village hall. ‘This is the most important day in your sister’s life,’ her mum had snapped, from her flat in Tattarbacken.
    ‘Neither you nor Birgitta came to my wedding,’ Annika had countered.
    ‘Yes, but you got married in Korea!’ Uncomprehending indignation.
    ‘So? How come distances are always so much shorter for me than you?’
    She hadn’t spoken to Birgitta since the wedding. And not much before it, if she was honest. Not since she’d left home at eighteen.
    And she didn’t feel like calling Berit either. Admittedly, she’d keep the news quiet, but it didn’t feel right to burden a colleague with knowledge of the missing EU delegation.
    Obviously she ought to tell Thomas’s mother, Doris. But what could she say? Your son hasn’t answered his mobile for several days, but I wasn’t bothered at first because I thought he was off fucking some other