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Nelly leans forward and looks at him with an expression he can’t read. Her pale eyes are like shining porcelain globes.

‘Nelly, you and I are both rational individuals,’ Erik says, aware of the quiver of fear in his voice. ‘We respect each other… and I understand that you didn’t mean to hurt me as badly as you did.’

‘It’s just such a pain when you don’t do what I say,’ she sighs.

‘I know it feels like a pain, but it’s like that for everyone, it’s part of life.’

‘OK, fine,’ she says blankly.

She whispers something to herself and moves an object on the kitchen table. Sand falls on to a dusty sheet of glass, a small picture that’s leaning against the wall. It’s a framed contract of cooperation between Emmaboda Glassworks, Saint-Gobain, and Solbacken Glassworks.

‘My arm’s hurting badly, and my…’

‘Are you saying you need to go to hospital now?’ she asks derisively.

‘Yes, I need to get my arm X-rayed, and-’

‘I dare say you’ll be fine,’ she interrupts.

‘Not with an epidural hematoma,’ he says, touching the wound to his temple. ‘I could have arterial bleeding, here, between the dura mater and the inside of my skull.’

She looks at him in astonishment, then laughs.

‘Bloody hell, that really is pathetic!’

‘I mean… I’m just saying that if I’m going to be happy here, you’re going to have to look after me, make sure I’m OK…’

‘I am, you’ve got everything you need.’

Erik thinks that someone who’s capable of what Nelly has done has an insatiable emotional hunger, she’s desperately needy and can switch from devoted love to impassioned hatred in an instant.

‘Nelly,’ he asks tentatively, ‘how long are you thinking of keeping me locked up?’

She smiles at the floor, embarrassed, glances at her nails, then gives him an indulgent look.

‘Initially you’ll plead and maybe threaten me,’ she says. ‘You’ll promise all sorts of things… and soon you’ll try to manipulate me in different ways by saying you’re not planning to escape, that you only want to help me sweep the stairs.’

She adjusts her dress and looks at him in silence. After a while she crosses her legs and moves a little, so that the light from the torch brushes her cheek.

‘Nelly, I’m grateful to you for letting me stay here, but I don’t like the cellar, I don’t know why, that’s just the way it is,’ Erik says, but gets no response.

He looks at her and tries to remember how they first met.

She must have been somewhere in the vicinity when he was conducting his examination of Rocky, and then she applied for a job in his department.

How had she got it?

The head of personnel had committed suicide. That was just after she started.

Nelly was funny and easy-going, talkative, in a charming, self-deprecating way.

He went through a tough time when he got divorced from Simone. Particularly at night, all those long, sleepless hours. Nelly persuaded him to go back to using pills. She gave him Valium, Rohypnol, Sobril, Citodon – all the old pills he’d managed to kick several years before.

They drank and took their pills together, made fun of it. Now he can’t understand what he was thinking. They’d kissed, then ended up in bed together. She insisted on putting on a nightie that Simone had left behind, and he tried not to show how uncomfortable that made him feel.

Now he remembers something that happened very recently. It had been an unusually difficult day, one of his patients had been sectioned and put in a straitjacket, and he had spent hours with the relatives listening to their recriminations. Afterwards he was tired and it was so late that he decided to stay at the clinic and sleep on his bunk.

Nelly was there too, working overtime. She gave him a Rohypnol and then made them drinks out of medical spirit and Schweppes Russchian.

He must have taken too many drugs or drunk too much, because he’d slid rapidly into deep sleep.

He knows he slept for a long time, and very deeply, and that Nelly helped him get undressed before she went home.

But he dreamed that someone was kissing him, licking his closed lips and making him hold a cold glass ball, pressing it into his limp hand.

Through his drugged dream Nelly came back to him. Her tongue was pierced and she took his penis in her mouth. Then he dreamed that a deer came into his office, the same way Nelly had, and walked past his bunk to stand behind the floor lamp, raising its head and looking at him with bashful eyes.

Erik couldn’t sleep in the dream. Light filtered through his eyelashes and he could see Nelly. She was on her knees, pressing a cold, hard object into his hand. It was a small, brown, porcelain deer’s head.

Now she’s sitting there silently watching him with an impassive expression. As if she were waiting for his slow recuperation.

After a while she takes some neatly folded clothes out of a plastic bin-bag and puts them on her lap.

‘Are those clothes for me?’

‘Yes, sorry,’ she says, rolling them up and passing them to him through the mesh.

‘Thanks.’

He unfolds a pair of dirty jeans with muddy stains on the knees, and a washed-out T-shirt with the words Saab 39 Gripen printed across the chest. The clothes smell of sweat and damp, but Erik pulls off his tattered vest and gets changed very gingerly.

‘You’ve got a sweet little tummy,’ she says, and giggles.

‘Yes, haven’t I?’ he says quietly.

With a coquettish gesture she raises her chin and loosens the scarf covering her hair. Her blonde hair is stiff with blood. He forces himself to look her in the eye, not look away even though his heartbeat is speeding up with fear.

‘Nelly, we’re together,’ he says, swallowing hard. ‘We’ve always been together… but I’ve been waiting, because I thought you were with Martin.’

‘With Martin? But… you mustn’t think that meant anything,’ she says, blushing.

‘The two of you seemed happy.’

Her mouth turns serious and her lips tremble.

‘It’s just you and me,’ she says. ‘It’s always been us…’

He’s having trouble breathing, but tries to sound natural when he speaks.

‘I didn’t know if you regretted what happened, that time-’

‘Never,’ she whispers.

‘Me neither, I know I’ve done some silly things, but only because I felt abandoned.’

‘But-’

‘Because I’ve always felt we had a unique connection, Nelly. We always have had, the whole time.’

She wipes tears from her eyes and looks away. She rubs her nose with a trembling finger.

‘I didn’t mean to hurt you,’ she says quietly.

‘I wouldn’t say no to a couple of Morfin Medas,’ he says in a lighter tone.

‘OK.’ She nods quickly, wipes her face, then gets up and leaves.

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