In Sweden, we call it a 'kick'.

A couple of nights ago, mom noticed a strange figure in green lurking in the trees behind the old abandoned house across the road. Since it was 4 AM, and no one usually goes there, she found it a bit concerning.

Then we both saw her again last night, still wearing green, in the forest behind *our* cottage. Even discounting the fact that she was lurking inside the enclosure one of the neighbours up the road uses for his horses, she was acting strangely. When she realized that my mom had noticed her, she tried to hide behind some trees. When she realized there were more people in the yard (my fault - I was singing "Mamma Mia" quite loudly as I was hanging my bikini to dry) she hurried away.

At that point, even though I'd made fun of mom's worries after the first time she saw the woman, I had to admit that something was fishy.

Today, as we were cooling off in the river, another neighbour happened to come by (with the same goal as us). We told her about our observations, and she starting laughing hysterically.

The reason our neighbour was laughing? She knew why the woman was lurking in the woods.

It turns out that her brother (a divorced man in his fifties, btw) has a secret girlfriend. One of his other siblings had seen her sneaking through the woods the year before. A nephew had seen her exit his house from the back entrance, a sister in law had seen her car, parked at the school one kilometre away at a very early hour. When asked about it, apparently he vehemently denies having any lady-friends.

All that cloak and dagger business just so he can get laid without having his whole family knowing about it.

Case closed! We can sleep easy at night again.

Little backstory: our summer cottage is at the very outskirt of a small village, down a narrow gravel road. Very few people live here permanently. Out of the eight year-round residents, six are related to each other. Four of them are siblings.

We live at the bottom of a slope. Below us, to the east, there's only a narrow band of vegetation, and then there's the Torne river. To the north, there's a small forest area. It's fenced in, because of the horses. To the south, across the road, there's an old abandoned summer cottage. The house just above ours belong to one of the siblings. The house next in line belongs to another one. It's a family affair, is what I'm saying.