Page 248 of The Sleepwalker

The ceremony took place in a simple wooden church, Église Baptiste de Saint-Augustin, just off route 367.

Eight relatives attended.

The closest was Stephanie, a cousin who had played with Claire as a child. Her hair was just as blonde as Hugo’s mother’s had been, and she wore thick glasses and a faded T-shirt with the wordsJésus sauveon the front.

Hugo was the only one who cried.

When her ashes were buried two days later, Hugo and Agneta were the only ones present.

He took off the coin he wore around his neck and placed it inside the urn before it was lowered into the ground.

* * *

Hugo has found a French restaurant in Québec, and he takes Agneta for dinner two days before they are scheduled to fly home.

It is a warm summer’s evening, and they are sitting on theterrace with views out across the calm river. The sun is about to set, and the red, yellow and blue lanterns in the trees start to glow.

Hugo looks down at his phone and sees that Svanhildur has sent around three hundred hearts in reply to his message about coming home earlier than planned.

Joona Linna has also been in touch to let Hugo know that Olga Wójcik has been remanded in custody on suspicion of trafficking and procuring, and is facing up to ten years in prison. She is suspected of having, over a number of years, forced asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and vulnerable young men into hardcore pornography and prostitution.

There is evidence to suggest that she herself was groomed when she was sixteen, by a man called Jacek Jezak who then forced her into blindly doing whatever she was told.

Jacek was the one who came up with the idea of approaching Hugo and getting him to pay money into an account that Olga had access to. She tried to convince him to borrow or steal money from his father, but when he failed to do that Jacek broke into the house and took anything of value he could find – before being surprised by Bernard.

‘How do you feel now?’ Agneta asks, taking a sip of her wine.

‘I really don’t know,’ he replies, pushing his phone back in his pocket.

They no longer talk about Bernard and everything that happened last winter, but Hugo opens up and tells her about the coin. The silver dinar had been in his hand when he woke one morning as a child, and after the police investigation revealed that it had belonged to his mother’s lover, Hugo had asked Joona if he could keep it.

Since he arrived in Canada, Hugo has spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that his mother never did manage to return to her homeland, that all of the letters were actually fromBernard. She was never an addict, and she didn’t abandon Hugo. Her leaving, and choosing the drugs over him, was nothing but a lie to help explain her absence.

The waiter arrives with their food, and Hugo decides that he can’t wait any longer. He puts down his cutlery and looks up.

‘Agneta, I .?.?. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry for being such a dick towards you,’ he begins, swallowing hard. ‘I’ll be eighteen in October, but I was wondering if .?.?. I .?.?. I wanted to ask if you were still interested in adopting me, because I really, really want you to .?.?. You’re the best mum I could ever have, and .?.?.’

Agneta immediately starts crying, but despite the tears running down her cheeks, Hugo realises that he has never seen anyone look happier.