She looks at the others, the others look at their devices, except Karen, she looks at the ceiling. “Would anyone like a cookie?” asks Hannah, which is pretty much the most embarrassing thing you could say in a situation like this, a situation like separating from a lover, but the sentence has already been said, and they’re sitting at a table and it’s raining in the room. Don wants to go home. She lives in the north, in a one-room flat that’s very modern and that she shares with her girlfriend. She wants to go to her girlfriend and tell her that she’ll love her properly now because she’s seen that the people she thought she would always love more than all others have become strangers to her.

Don looks at Hannah and feels—

Nothing anymore.

And

HANNAH

Sits at the table and tries to remember her attitude toward life back then. There was this unbelievable rage. The feeling of powerlessness in a world that didn’t care about her. She tries to recall how the others looked back then, to recall the noodles and tomato sauce, the excitement when she thought a new life was beginning. She tries to remember the hackers, the excitement of long nights around the campfire and how she felt, but. Everything has faded. She wants to go home, the home where she is training to become a chef. She’s grown chubby, which always seemed unimaginable given her bony frame; she’s gotten chubby and lives with Peter, whom she doesn’t understand, because

PETER

Has become Hannah’s child. He does nothing. He barely talks anymore. He sits at the window and waits for Hannah to come home. Peter’s getting bad. Every morning when she closes the door behind her and heads down the stairs, Peter starts to hum to distract himself, to keep himself from panicking at the thought that Hannah won’t come back.

But

HANNAH

Always comes back. She has met a young man at her training course. She goes to the bathroom with the young man during breaks and has sex. She loves the young man. He is everything Peter is not. Inconspicuous. And healthy. He has a terrific social points score. The red-haired, healthy Irish boy, who laughs a lot and cracks jokes, and who wants nothing more in life than a little cottage in Ireland and his own restaurant and a few sheep and dogs and goats and children. The young man likes Hannah but he doesn’t adore her. He doesn’t need her.