She stops going to Der Zentaur. It’s a wrench—she likes the wine and Brigitta treats her like a local—but she can’t face the idea of finding him there again, waiting for her to fall in with the universe’s plan. Fuck the universe’s plan. She finds a new bar on the other side of the old town to sit and drink her wine alone.

Three weeks later, she is with Lily in the Turkish café down the road from her flat. She must have been staring out of the window too long, because Lily clicks her fingers by her ear, startling her back to the present.

“Girl trouble?” Lily asks knowingly.

Thora sighs. “Not this time.”

Lily frowns. “Boy trouble? It’s been a while.”

Thora considers telling her about Santi, about why she walked away. He was perfect. That was the problem. Lily would, quite reasonably, tell her that was insane.

Lily pours an unconscionable amount of honey into her mint tea. “Has there been anyone since Jules?”

Her name is still painful, a reminder of all the ways she was good to Thora and all the ways Thora failed her. “Not really.”

Lily stares at her piercingly. “Okay, so you’re obviously in a cryptic mood, and I can’t be arsed to play detective. Call me if you ever want to talk about it. In the meantime, can we make a plan for the sci-fi festival? If we don’t book soon, the whole thing’s going to sell out.”

As the days pass, Thora waits, at first warily and then with something like longing, for the universe to throw Santi back into her path. She crosses and recrosses the park between Ehrenfeld and the Belgian Quarter, waiting for running steps and a hand on her shoulder. At the sci-fi festival, she remembers the books on his bedside table and turns, searching the darkened cinema for his face. Finally, one weekend afternoon, she steels herself and walks into Der Zentaur, fully expecting him to be at the table where she first saw him. But there is only Holger, the morose local who always sits at the bar, and a couple talking in whispers in the window.

She sits down at her usual table and orders a glass of red wine. As she waits, she brings out the wiring diagrams and places them carefully under her elbow. She has tried to make everything the same, but differences beyond her control keep intruding: the whispering couple, the new arrangement of the tables, each detail breaking the mad magic she’s trying to weave.

When Brigitta brings her drink, Thora looks at it with a despair so profound that the barmaid hesitates. “You wanted wine, yes?”

Thora nods and takes a sip. “Brigitta,” she says. “Do you remember the man I ended up talking to in here after you swapped our drinks? Dark-haired, Spanish, kind of short.”