machine. Sometimes Henrik would make a special recording just for her if something important had happened, a private message she shared with the whole world. She said that she was in Visby, that she was on her way. Then she rang his mobile. No answer.
She felt uneasy, a feeling so slight that she was barely aware of it.
She slept that night with the window open. She woke up once, around midnight. Some young drunks were shouting about a girl who was an easy lay, but evidently she wouldn't have them.
At ten o'clock the next morning she delivered her paper on Attic clay and its consistency. She talked about the high iron content and contrasted the red colour of the ferric oxide with the lime-rich clay from Corinth that produced white or even green ceramics. After a hesitant start – several of her audience had evidently had a long and late dinner the previous evening, washed down with copious amounts of wine – she managed to capture their interest. She spoke for exactly forty-five minutes, and received an enthusiastic round of applause when she finished. During the subsequent discussion she did not have to field any awkward questions, and when they broke up for coffee, she felt she had justified her coming here.
The wind had eased off. She took her coffee into the courtyard and balanced it on her knee when she sat down on a bench. Her mobile rang. She was sure it would be Henrik, but the call came from Greece and was from Vassilis. She hesitated, and decided not to answer. Soon enough she would return to Argolis and go to see him then.
She put her mobile back in her handbag, drank her coffee, then decided that she had had enough. The speakers scheduled for the rest of the day would no doubt have very interesting things to say, but she did not want to hang around any longer. She returned her coffee cup and went to see the man with the hare lip. She told him that a friend had unexpectedly fallen ill – it wasn't life-threatening, but serious enough for her to feel that she ought to return home immediately.
She would regret those words. They would return to haunt her. She had cried wolf, and the wolf had come.
But just then Visby was bathed in autumn sunshine. She went back to her hotel, was helped by the receptionist to change her air ticket and was lucky enough to find a seat on a flight leaving at three o'clock. That gave her time to take a walk round the city walls, and she called in at two shops to try on knitted jumpers made from local wool but failed to find one that fitted her. She had lunch at a Chinese restaurant and decided not to phone Henrik, but to surprise him. She had a key to his flat, and he had told her that she could go in at any time – he had no secrets from her.
She arrived at the airport in good time, and saw the photograph taken the previous day in a local newspaper. She tore the page out and put it in her handbag. Then came an announcement that the aircraft she was due to fly on had developed a technical fault, and she would have to wait for a replacement plane that was already on its way from Stockholm.
She was not annoyed, but could feel her impatience growing. As there was no alternative flight, she sat in the sun outside the terminal building and smoked a cigarette. She was sorry now that she hadn't spoken to Vassilis: it would have been as well to get it over with and weather the furious outburst of a man whose vanity had been wounded and who could not accept a no for what it was.
But she did not phone him. Her flight eventually left after a two-hour delay, and it was nearly six by the time she was back in Stockholm. She took a taxi to Henrik's flat on Söder. They were caught in a traffic jam caused by a road accident – it was as if invisible forces were combining to hold her back, to spare her what was in store. But she knew nothing of that, of course, and merely felt her impatience increasing. It seemed that in many ways Sweden had started to become more like Greece, with gridlocked traffic and constant delays.
Henrik lived in Tavastgatan, a quiet street set back