She turns her palm upwards so she can lace her fingers with his. She feels his cold thumb stroking her wrist. It feels so strange and confusing to touch him, to hold his hand. More intimate than lying naked beside him in his bed. And when she turns to him and meets his eyes again, it is as though a door opens inside her. For so long it’s felt like she was stumbling around in a big gloomy room, a cave or a tomb, trapped inside memories, and she didn’t know what to do. Memories and guilt. She got lost in that room, didn’t know how to find a way out, didn’t know where the door was, or if there even was one.

But now, here in the grey chill of Brussels, just days after Gabi’s arrest and her grandfather’s funeral, with George’s hand in hers, it’s as though she found it. As if she fumbled onto the door handle in the dark, as if she turned it and discovered the door was never locked.

She looks at George. Sees his blonde hair, his slightly worried eyes, feels his fingers playing with her own. He’s not the door, not the one who opened it. But maybe he’s the one standing there when she cracks it open.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘We’ll figure this out.’

23 November

Brussels

‘Hurry up!’ says the person blocking Jacob’s way.

But the voice isn’t threatening, just stressed, urgent, anxious. He lifts his head and sees Yassim coming towards him.

‘Come on!’ he cries. ‘We have to get out of here now!’

It’s like in a dream where everything is turned around without explanation or context. His friend is suddenly a monster, then a moment later he’s transformed into a friend again.

He hears movements and voices through the open window. His jailers are on their way into the cell.

‘Come on!’ Yassim cries.

After so long in the dark, Jacob has to squint under the yellow lights of the Christmas decorations hanging across the street outside the gate. His whole body hurts as he runs. And when the first gunshot cuts through the grey evening air he jumps. He hears Yassim shouting in his ear. ‘Faster! Faster!’

Then more shots, more deafening explosions ringing in his ears, as Yassim points to a small green Volkswagen Polo parked just down the street.

They jump into the car, and Yassim has it started before Jacob even has time to blink. He speeds off down the uneven street so fast, Jacob is pressed back against his seat.

The car sits low, almost directly on the road, and it jumps and bounces and somewhere another shot sounds, and cars honk all around them. Yassim is gripping the wheel with one hand, his left is resting on his knee, as if it were loose or powerless.

A red spot is spreading near the collar of his jacket.