A dripping tap irritated her, but the worst was that she felt more watched than ever; the monster was with her in the bathroom or so it felt. She looked in the bath: nothing. She looked in the toilet and there she thought an eye looked up at her. She screamed to high heaven, but it was only a towel holder, which one of her parents had accidentally dropped.

It took her a while to calm down. Then she looked in the mirror and became increasingly convinced that a monster was in the glass itself! Perhaps it had been there for several years just waiting for the first chance to catch her! She screamed for her parents as though they could hear her far away in Stockholm!

She was losing her balance. It was hopeless. She knew that there were no monsters, but perhaps there was just this one. The long loneliness of the evening was no loneliness! She had the company of some sort of monster and then she heard its hoarse voice say her name: "Linnea, come to me, darling. I have come to you!"

She knew the voice well. Perhaps she had heard it in a nightmare. She still sat in the bathroom hoping that the locked door would protect her. The voice faded away slowly, but it left her in a state of fear so strong that she thought she would die. This was not imagination. She had heard her own name.