'You fucking pig,' said Jeanette, reaching for one of the objects she was unpacking. In the next instant a porcelain lighthouse whistled towards his head, but it missed and hit the display window instead. With a deafening crash the pane shattered and big chunks of glass came sliding down. The silence that followed was so complete that it echoed off the walls. Like two combatants they stared at each other as mutual rage made their chests heave. Then Niclas turned on his heel and walked calmly out of the shop. The only sound was the glass crunching under his shoes.

Arne stood in helpless silence and watched while she packed. If Asta hadn't been so determined, the sight of him would have surprised her so much that she would have stopped what she was doing. Arne had never before been helpless. But her fury kept her hands at work, folding clothes and placing them in the biggest suitcase they owned. She didn't yet know how she was going to lug it out of the house, or where she would go. It didn't matter. She didn't intend to stay one more minute in the same house with him. Finally the scales had fallen from her eyes. That feeling of dissonance that she'd always had, the feeling that things might not be the way that Arne said, had finally taken over. He wasn't all-powerful. He wasn't perfect. He was merely a weak, pathetic man who enjoyed bullying other people. And then there was his belief in God. It probably didn't go very deep. Asta saw clearly now how he used the word of God in a way that strangely enough always matched his own views. If God was like Arne's God, then she wanted no part of his faith.

'But Asta, I don't understand. Why are you doing this?'

His voice was whiny like a little boy's, and she didn't even feel like answering him. He stood there in the doorway wringing his hands as he watched her remove one item of clothing after another from the drawers and wardrobes. She didn't intend to come back, so it was best that she take everything all at once.

'Where are you going to go? You have nowhere to go!'

Now he was begging her, but the extraordinary nature of the situation only made her shudder. She tried not to think of all the years she'd wasted; fortunately she was cast in a pragmatic mould. What was done was done. But she didn't intend to waste even one more day of her life.

Acutely aware that the situation was about to slip out of his grasp, Arne now attempted a more tried and true method. He thought he could gain control by raising his voice.

'Asta, you have to stop all this nonsense! Unpack your clothes at once!'

For an instant she did stop packing, but only long enough to give him a look that summed up forty years of oppression. She gathered all her wrath, all her hatred, and tossed it back at him. To her satisfaction she saw him recoil and then shrink before her gaze. When he spoke again it was in a quiet, pitiful voice. The voice of a man who realized that he'd for ever lost control.

'I didn't mean… I mean, of course I shouldn't have spoken to the girl that way, I realize that now. But she lacked all respect, and when she behaved so stubbornly towards me I could hear the voice of God telling me that I was compelled to intervene, and -'

Asta cut him off. 'Arne Antonsson. God has never spoken to you. He never will. You're too stupid and deaf for that. As for all that nonsense I've listened to for forty years about how you never had a chance to become a pastor because your father drank up all the money – you should know that it wasn't money that was lacking. Your mother kept a tight grip on the pursestrings and didn't let your father drink up more than was necessary. But she told me before she died that she had no intention of throwing their money away by sending you to seminary school. She may have been an unkind woman, but she had a clear head, and she could see that you weren't suited to be a pastor.'

Arne gasped for breath and stared at her as he slowly turned more and more pale. For a moment she thought he was having a heart attack, and felt herself softening inside against her will. But then she turned on her heel and marched out of the house. She slowly let the air seep out between her lips. She took no pleasure in destroying him, but in the end he'd given her no choice.

She didn't understand how she could keep doing so many things wrong. Once again she had ended up here in the cellar, and the dark seemed to make the wound on her bottom hurt that much more. It was the buckle on the belt that had torn open the wound. Mother only used the end with the buckle when she had been really bad. If only she could understand what was so terrible about taking a tiny little biscuit. They had looked so good, and the cook had made so many that nobody would notice if one was missing. But sometimes she wondered whether her mother sensed it when she was about to stuff something good in her mouth. Mother would come sneaking up behind her without a sound, just as her hand was going to close around something delicious. Then all she could do was steel herself and hope that Mother was having a good day so that it would be one of the milder punishments.

At first she had tried to give Father a beseeching look, but he always looked away. He would pick up his newspaper and go out to sit on the veranda while Mother dispensed whatever punishment she'd chosen. She no longer even tried to get any help from him.

She was shivering from the cold. Little rustling sounds became magnified in her mind as she pictured gigantic rats and enormous spiders, and she could hear them getting closer. It was so hard to keep track of time. She didn't know how long she'd been sitting down here in the dark, but judging by the growling in her stomach it must have been hours. She was nearly always hungry, which was why Mother kept reprimanding her so harshly. There seemed to be something inside her that constantly longed for food, cakes and candy, something that screamed to be filled with sweets. Right now she tasted instead the rough, dry, acrid substance that Mother always made her eat. A spoonful that was forced down her throat when the blows stopped and it was time for her to sit in the cellar. Mother said that what she was feeding her was Humility. Mother also said that she was punishing her for her own good. That a girl couldn't allow herself to get fat, because then no man would look at her and she would have to spend her whole life alone.

Actually she didn't understand what would be so terrible about that. Mother never seemed to look at Father with any joy in her eyes, and none of the men who kept swaggering round Mother's slim figure, giving her compliments and fawning over her, seemed to give her any great satisfaction. No, she would rather be alone than live in the icy cold that prevailed between her parents. Maybe that was why food and sweets tempted her so much. Maybe that was how she could acquire a thick protective padding over her skin that was so sensitive, both to Mother's constant reproaches and to the beatings. Even at such a young age she had known that she could never live up to her mother's expectations. Mother had made that quite clear. Even so, she had really tried. She had done everything that Mother said, trying especially hard to starve off the fat that kept collecting under her skin. But nothing seemed to help.

But she had begun to learn who was actually to blame for everything. Mother had explained that it was Father who demanded so much of them, and that was why Mother had to be so strict with her. At first it had sounded a bit strange. Father never raised his voice and seemed entirely too weak to make any demands on Mother, but the more often the claim was repeated, the more it began to sound like the truth.

She'd begun to hate Father. If only he stopped being so malicious and unreasonable, Mother would be nice and the beatings would stop and everything would be better. Then she would be able to stop eating, and become just as thin and beautiful as Mother, and Father would be proud of them both. Instead he made Mother sneak up to her room in tears in the evenings and in a whisper describe the various ways he tormented her. On those occasions she always said how painful it was for her to be the one who meted out the punishments. She called her darling, just like when she was small, and promised that things would be different. A person did what she had to do, said Mother and then gave her a hug, which was so unusual and unexpected that at first she sat as stiff as a stick, unable to respond to the embrace. Gradually she began to long for those occasions when her Mother put her thin arms round her neck and she felt her cheeks wet with tears against her own. Then she felt needed.