She orders herself a glass of white wine, sits down on one of the colourful plastic chairs at the far end of the long room and feels her anxiety grow. Maybe it’s the depressing, deserted bar with Adele’s soft voice streaming over the speakers above her, filling the bar with empty nostalgia, but her breath becomes more shallow and the pressure in her chest starts to spread to her left arm with acute and intense pain. For a moment, she’s afraid she might fall off her chair. She closes her eyes and grabs the table so hard her knuckles turn white.

‘Miss?’

Klara can barely hear, her ears are ringing so loudly it sounds as if she’s standing in a waterfall.

‘Are you okay, miss?’

She turns her head to the bar and sees, as if through a haze, a worried bartender leaning over the counter. She tries to nod and give him some kind of smile, but answering is beyond her capabilities. She manages to loosen her grip on the marble table and grab onto the stem of her wine glass. The noise just increases in her ears; she can barely hear Adele any more, and she can see the bartender’s lips move, but his mouth isn’t making any sound. He leaves the bar and starts to move towards her, but it’s as if he’s in another world, as if she’s in a bubble all by herself. The pit is wide open inside her now, and if she had the strength, any strength at all, she would scream or start to weep.

She feels the bartender’s hand on her shoulder – he’s shaking her gently, but she can’t do anything other than keep her eyes shut and try to hold it together as best she can.

‘Miss? Miss? Are you on something? Are you on any medication?’

The roar in her ears. The pain in her chest.

And then suddenly something else. A voice she recognizes. A voice that cuts through it all.

‘Klara?’ the voice says. ‘What the hell? What’s going on?’

She opens her eyes and the noise starts to diminish until it’s no longer deafening, more like the slight buzz of a bee or a wasp. The pain is just a strip across her chest, and she takes a breath, forcing herself to suck the oxygen as deep into her lungs as she can.

‘It’s fine,’ the man says to the bartender. ‘I’ll take care of it; she’s my friend.’

She recognizes the man leaning over her, despite the round, tortoiseshell glasses, even though the blonde hair isn’t slicked back with gel any more, but is product-free, tousled, and longer. Even though he has on a denim shirt instead of a neatly pressed, tailored pink one, even though he’s not wearing a pinstriped suit jacket, but a navy-blue bomber jacket.