"Does she have to do that in the car?" barks Ove.

The Saab is so full of people when Ove drives away from the hospital that he keeps checking the fuel gauge, as if he's afraid that it's going to break into a scornful dance. In his rearview mirror he sees Parvaneh unconcernedly giving the three-year-old paper and color crayons.

Patrick sits between them, turning and twisting his body to try to find a comfortable position for his leg cast, which he's wedged up on the armrest between the front seats.

Ove doesn't answer. Just looks at the three-year-old in his mirror. She's shaking a big purple crayon at the cat in Parvaneh's lap and yelling: "DROORING!" The cat observes the child with great caution, clearly reluctant to make itself available as a decorative surface.

"Would you rather have her restless, so she starts wondering how to pull the upholstery off of the seats?" Parvaneh says calmly.

It's not easy, because he's doing his best not to dislodge the newspapers that Ove has placed both on his seat and under the cast.

Ove rolls his eyes.

"Pretty neat, isn't it?" Jimmy crows and looks as if he's about to make a high-five at Ove.

"So you're going to start making a mess as well?" says Ove.

"Sorry, man, couldn't stop myself," says Jimmy and, somewhat shamefaced, gives back the crayon to Parvaneh.

The three-year-old drops a color crayon, which rolls forward under the front passenger seat, where Jimmy is sitting. In what must surely be a move worthy of an Olympian acrobat for a man of his physique, Jimmy manages to bend forward and scoop up the crayon from the mat in front of him. He checks it out for a moment, grins, then turns to Patrick's propped-up leg and draws a large, smiling man on the cast. The toddler shrieks with joy when she notices.

There's a plinging sound in Jimmy's pocket. He hauls out a cell phone as large as a full-grown man's hand and occupies himself with frenetically tapping the display.

"Ove's kitty!" the three-year-old answers with rock-solid certainty.

"Whose is the cat?" Patrick asks from the back.

"No one's being handed in to any bloody home!"

She laughs. Patrick looks very puzzled. She pats him encouragingly on the knee.

"Well… to a cat home or someth --" Patrick begins, but gets no further before Ove bawls:

The cat lifts its head a little, hissing briefly at him by way of an answer.

The cat lifts its head to find out what all the commotion is about, then concludes that all this is sensationally uninteresting and snuggles back into Parvaneh's lap. Or rather, her belly.

"What do you mean, 'handed in'?" Ove says, cutting him short.

He sees Parvaneh smiling teasingly at him in the rearview mirror.

"So it's not being handed in somewhere?" Patrick wonders, scrutinizing the feline.

And with this, the subject is exhausted. Patrick tries not to look startled. Parvaneh tries not to burst out laughing. Neither really manages.

"He's a bloody vagrant, that's what he is!" Ove corrects.

"Don't worry about what Ove is saying. It's absolutely his cat."

"No it ISN'T!" says Ove.

"Is so!" she says.

"It is not," Ove corrects her at once.

"Can't we stop off somewhere for something to eat?" Jimmy interjects and adjusts his seat position; the Saab starts swaying.

Ove looks at the group assembled around him, as if he's been kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe. For a moment he thinks about swerving off the road, until he realizes that the worst-case scenario would be that they all accompanied him into the afterlife. After this insight, he reduces his speed and increases the gap significantly between his own car and the one in front.

"Yeah! Then we can have something to eat at the same time." Jimmy nods with anticipation.

"There'll be no stopping here," says Ove firmly.

"Yeah, let's do that, I need a wee as well," says Parvaneh.

"Wee!" yells the three-year-old.

"Can we stop, Ove? Nasanin needs to pee," Parvaneh calls out, in that manner peculiar to people who believe that the backseat of a Saab is two hundred yards behind the driver.

"McDonald's will be fine, stop there," Parvaneh nods.

"McDonald's has toilets," Jimmy informs them helpfully.

"What did you say?" asks Ove, as if he must have heard her wrong.

"Yeah, yeah," says Ove.

Ove nods. She looks a little dejected. He rolls up the window again. She walks around the car and hops in on the passenger side.

She's eating french fries. Ove reaches forward and puts more newspaper on the floor in front of her. She starts laughing. He can't understand at what.

"I need your help, Ove," she says suddenly.

She shrugs. "Patrick will be in casts for months. I have to get a driver's license so I can give the girls lifts. I thought you could give me some driving lessons."

"Are you sure you don't want anything?" she says softly to him.

Ove doesn't seem spontaneously or enormously enthusiastic.

"I thought you could help me pass my driving test," she continues.

"Thanks for stopping." She smiles.

Parvaneh eyes him in the rearview mirror. Ove glares back. Ten minutes later he's sitting in the Saab, waiting for them all outside McDonald's. Even the cat has gone inside with them. The traitor. Parvaneh comes out and taps on Ove's window.

"Surely it's got everything to do with it?"

She gets out of the car and goes to the trash can. Ove doesn't answer. He just snorts.

"And no driver's license?"

"What's that got to do with it?" she replies.

"No. I never had one."

"I'm a real estate agent."

"What's your job?" he asks.

Ove looks so confused that he even forgets to get upset.

"So in other words you don't have a driver's license?"

"Can I eat in the car?" he asks, a piece of chicken sticking out of his mouth.

Jimmy shows up in the doorway.

"Look at it this way, Ove: Do you really want anyone else to teach me to drive in the residential area?"

"Did you lose your license?"

"No."

"So it wasn't a joke?"

Ove shakes his head grimly, as if this is the very pinnacle of being a human being who doesn't take responsibility for anything. Parvaneh smiles that little teasing smile of hers again, scrunches up the empty french fries bag, and opens the door.

Ove nods.

Ove's brain seems to need a good few moments to process this information, which, to him, is utterly beyond belief.

"No."

"No."

At least it's relatively quiet in the car for ten minutes until they roll into the parking area outside Ove's garage. Ove stops alongside the bicycle shed, puts the Saab into neutral without turning off the engine, and gives his passengers a meaningful look.

At first Ove thinks of saying no, but then realizes they'll never get out of here at this rate. Instead, he spreads so many newspapers over the passenger seat and floor that it's as if he's preparing to give the car a respray.

Jimmy nods, upbeat. His cell phone plings.

Ove has no further questions.

"Just hop in, will you, so we can get home," he groans and gestures at Jimmy.

Jimmy nods enthusiastically.

"I program iPhone apps."

"It's fine, Ove. Patrick can manage on his crutches from here," says Parvaneh with unmistakable irony.

"Sorry, man, work keeps e-mailing me all the time," says Jimmy, balancing his food in one hand and fiddling with the phone in his pocket with the other.

"So you have a job, then?" says Ove.

"And stop that noise -- this isn't a bloody pinball arcade."

"It's Nasanin's drawing."

Parvaneh lifts out the three-year-old in her car seat and puts it on the ground. The girl waves something in the air, while yelling out some garbled words.

Parvaneh nods, goes back to the car, leans in through the front door, and gives Ove a sheet of paper.

Ove gives the paper a reluctant look. It's filled with lines and swirls.

"What's that?" Ove asks, making not the slightest movement to accept it.

"Cars aren't allowed in the residential area," says Ove.

"That's Jimmy, and that's the cat, and that's Patrick and me. And that's you," explains Parvaneh.

"What am I supposed to do with that?"

When she says that last bit she points at a figure in the middle of the drawing. Everything else on the paper is drawn in black, but the figure in the middle is a veritable explosion of color. A riot of yellow and red and blue and green and orange and purple.

Undeterred, Patrick extricates himself and his cast from the backseat of the car, while Jimmy squeezes out of the passenger seat, chicken grease all over his T-shirt.

"She's drawn you," Parvaneh replies, and shoves it into his hands.

It takes several seconds before Ove collects himself enough to call out after her: "What do you mean, 'always'?"

Slightly offended, Ove adjusts the newspaper on the passenger seat. The cat climbs over from the back and makes itself comfortable on it. Ove backs the Saab into the garage. Closes the door. Puts it into neutral without turning off the engine. Feels the exhaust fumes slowly filling the garage and gazes at the plastic tube hanging on the wall. For a few minutes all that can be heard is the cat's breathing and the engine's rhythmic stuttering. It would be easy, just sitting there and waiting for the inevitable. It's the only logical thing, Ove knows. He's been longing for it for a long time now. The end. He misses her so much that sometimes he can't bear existing in his own body. It would be the only rational thing, just sitting here until the fumes lull both him and the cat to sleep and bring this to an end.

Then she closes the passenger door and walks off.

But by then they have all started walking back to the houses.

"You're the funniest thing she knows. That's why she always draws you in color," says Parvaneh.

But then he looks at the cat. And he turns off the engine.

Then he crosses the road and starts clearing snow in front of the other houses.

The next morning they get up at quarter to six. Drink coffee and eat tuna fish respectively. When they've finished their inspection round, Ove carefully shovels snow outside his house. When he's done with that he stands outside his shed, leaning on his snow shovel, looking at the line of row houses.