Maybe she was wrong. Perhaps Bromma just made her hyper-vigilant about anyone with a vaguely Eastern European look and shifty eyes.

*

Full of doubt now, she turns and walks through the automatic doors towards the taxis. It’s four in the afternoon. She doesn’t even know where to go, just knows she needs a glass of wine as soon as possible.

The taxi queue takes less than five minutes.

‘Place Sablon,’ she says to the driver. It surprises her that she’s requested that flashy and touristy square with its chocolate and antique shops, rather than the neighbourhood of Ixelles where she lived for three years. But the thought of her old neighbourhood just makes her anxiety worse. Better to stick to the tourist areas, better if she doesn’t let the city really sink in. Better to have a soft landing.

She stares worriedly out the rear window as the taxi rolls past the parking lots and airport hotels. Suddenly it hits her that in one of those cars behind her slowly gliding through the afternoon rain there could be a person who’s following her. She shudders as she turns forward again.

The Brussels Ring in, past NATO headquarters, the grey and gritty streets on the outskirts of the Schaerbeek district, and then past Square Ambiorix. She bends forward to get a view of the apartment building at this small park’s south-eastern corner, where she sublet a furnished one-bedroom for the first three months she lived in Brussels. The taxi swings away from the square and over towards the EU institutions. It feels like another life now, among the restaurants and bars of Rue Archimède. Everything looks familiar; she knows everything about this life, the lunches and the smiles, the suits, the dresses. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to imagine that she was ever a part of it, that the person who experienced all that is the same person sitting in this taxi.

Then they’re at the very heart of the EU – the Schuman roundabout with the European Council headquarters and the Commission’s star-shaped building, the Berlaymont, on the right. She feels a little ache in her stomach when the traffic stops just in front of the roundabout, and she sees all the stressed-out people in suits on the sidewalks with their hands full of folders and binders, phones pressed to their ears.

That could have been her. That was her. Until Mahmoud contacted her two years ago. Before Paris and London and last summer. That was her before the anxiety and the sleepless nights and the grief.

Now a pit opens inside her again, and she can feel herself falling and fast. She bends forward between the seats towards the driver.

‘Drive to Place Luxembourg instead,’ she says.