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fingertip.
‘Bats here only eat old butterflies and things like that,’ she says.
That information disappoints the boy. He has seen for himself that bats have sharp teeth. Like needles. He thinks it is likely they can drink blood, if they want to.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘If they are really hungry.’
‘Then perhaps you are immune now, Mummy.’
‘Except it didn’t bite me.’
‘But think if it had!’
‘Yes,’ she says, nodding with her mouth full of bread. ‘Well then, maybe I am.’
*
There is a beach on the nearby lake, and now that the sun is motionless in the sky and beating down they decide to go swimming and then do some shopping. They pack their swimming things and a mask in a canvas bag and hurry down the path. The boy carries his bathrobe and flaps it about. He allows the mosquitoes to get up close before he hits them.
The sun has been baking the car for hours and a strong smell of upholstery and overheated rubber hits him as he climbs into the back seat. It is so burning hot that he has to sit on his bathrobe, crouching like a monkey.
*
It is not far to the beach and he is surprised when after only a short while they pull up in a gravel car park. Pine cones crunch under their feet as they follow the path down towards the water.
Alders with large shiny leaves hang down over the jetty and entangle themselves in the reeds. The boy and his mother arealone, but someone has been there recently because in the grass on the lakeside is a glittering pile of shells. All the shells are tiny and fragile. The boy does not dare to touch them. He does not want to spoil anything.
The water has a strange red colour which he tries to collect in his cupped hands, but the red does not come up with the water. It is only in the lake, which is not actually a lake but part of the Dal River, his mother tells him, as she sits on the jetty with a towel draped around her shoulders and her hand like a sun visor above her glasses.
Using a stick he dredges up dripping seaweed, which he collects in a pile. It is a silent game. The only sound is the water trickling back into the lake. From time to time the sun shines through patches of wispy cloud. Later he tries the swimming mask, seeing the undulating gravel on the lake bed. Something is swimming there, a tiny fish. He tries to catch it in his mask but it darts away.
*
The shop is located in an old wooden building with empty advertisement boards on the walls and sun-bleached awnings. It looks shut but his mother says it is not. There are steps up to the door and the metal railing is encrusted with rust. His mother is walking quickly. She is in a hurry all of a sudden.
They both fill the basket, the boy putting in a Falu sausage which he thinks they should have for dinner. He goes to fetch milk cartons too, but they are difficult to find because they do not look like the ones at home.
In the queue for the checkout they stand behind an old woman who is buying a bottle of elderflower cordial, and his mother lays her hand on his head, feeling how his hair has begun to dry and stand up from his scalp.
‘Was it nice to go swimming?’ she asks, but he does not answer. He is engrossed in the comic he has been allowed to buy, guessing what it says in the speech bubbles.
*
With both hands he hauls the heavy paper carrier bag up the veranda steps and in through the door, which he quickly closes behind him. The air has turned warm in the cabin and he can hear an insect buzzing against one of the windows. He puts the bag down by the fridge, takes out a carton of milk and opens the door. And recoils.
It is lying there on the rack, next to the tube of cod roe spread.
Small, shaggy and greyish-brown, with crumpled wings drawn up tight to its body, its head like a shrunken dog. Strange cupped ears.
He races out so fast the hood of his bathrobe falls down.
His mother is on her way back from the outside toilet. She is carrying a folded newspaper and looks at him in surprise.
Panting and shrieking, he