Fabel laughed at the reflection of his own clumsiness. ‘There is no Frau Fabel. Or at least, there isn’t now; I’ve been divorced for about five years.’

‘I’m sorry … I didn’t mean …’

Fabel held up his hands. ‘No need. I’ve got used to it. It’s difficult for a partner to put up with this life … and my wife got involved with someone … well, someone who was there when I wasn’t.’

‘I really am sorry.’

‘Like I said, don’t be. I have a beautiful daughter who spends all the time she can with me.’

A silence fell between them. The conversation had taken a suddenly and awkwardly intimate turn and neither seemed to be able to find the way back. Susanne looked out over the water of the Alsterfleet towards the Rathaus square while Fabel pushed a piece of herring around his plate with his fork. After a few seconds of silence they both started to speak at once.

Susanne laughed. ‘You first …’

‘I was just going to ask you …’ Fabel started, aware of his too-tentative tone. He repeated himself, this time more assertively: ‘I was just going to ask you, seeing as you don’t have time just now, if you would perhaps like to have dinner with me sometime …’

Susanne smiled broadly. ‘I would enjoy that. How about next week? Phone me at the office and we’ll arrange it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘God, it’s time I was somewhere else … thanks for the wine, Herr Fabel …’

‘Call me Jan, please …’

‘Thanks for the wine, Jan … I’ll hear from you next week?’

Fabel rose from his chair and shook her hand. ‘You may count on it …’

He watched her as she walked back through the Arcade and the alternating bands of shadow and golden sunlight cast by the colonnades. The beer and his tiredness mingled to give him a sense of unreality. Had she really said yes?

Wednesday 4 June, 9.00 p.m. Aussendeich, near Cuxhaven.

It was as if she were disconnected from her body, from her immediate environment, from the world. There was a thick viscous coating around her consciousness. Sometimes it thinned and she perceived things more normally, then it would cloud over her again and obfuscate the reality around her. It made her angry, yet even this raw emotion was attenuated by the sludge that enveloped every thought, every sensation, every movement. She fell again. She felt damp leaves clinging to her face; the taste of foetid mulch in her mouth. There were trees all around her. She knew she should know what to call a place like this, but the word ‘forest’ was too distant, required too immense an intellectual effort to recall. She lay for a moment and then staggered to her feet, took a few more steps and fell again. The slime slugged around her consciousness once more, thick and dark this time, and she slipped back into unconsciousness.

When she awoke, it had become darker. An instinct too powerful to be dulled by the drug seized her and she clambered to her feet. There were lights ahead. Moving lights flickering through the silhouette trunks of the trees. It was her instinct that reached through to pull her towards the lights, not any full recognition that ahead lay a road, help, rescue. She stumbled a couple of times more, but now she was being pulled towards the lights as if she was on the end of a tugged line. The ground underfoot became more even, with fewer snagging roots or branches to trip her. The lights grew bigger. Brighter.