Jacob shakes his head. ‘Now? You’re taking a trip today, this morning?’

Yassim nods. ‘I wasn’t expecting this,’ he says. ‘With you. And I’m late. Very, very late.’

He takes a step over to the sparse grass and slowly backs away through the dawn light, backs towards the gate they entered through, towards the world they came from.

Jacob stands up too. He wants to follow, he wants to say: Wait! I’m coming with you. We can take a taxi, a flight, whatever you want.

But instead, he just asks hollowly: ‘But you’ll call, right?’

Now it’s almost completely light in the garden, and he watches as the sun’s rays make their way over the grass, towards the palace and up above the dark branches of the trees. Yassim smiles at him again and nods calmly. ‘I’ll call,’ he says. ‘When I get back, I promise.’

Jacob wants to believe him, wants to think that what Yassim says is true, that the fairytale of this night was real. At the same time, he can’t help feeling like this is the end. Not every fairytale has a happy ending.

21 November

Sankt Anna

Snow whirls in through the doors of the parish house as Klara and Grandma send the funeral guests out into the darkness one by one – after two hours of coffee and sandwiches, halting speeches and anecdotes.

As Klara turns around to find a jacket for one of her grandfather’s older cousins, she catches a glimpse of her face in the small mirror above the hall table. For a moment she doesn’t recognize herself with her new haircut. She looks younger than her thirty-two years, she thinks. Thinner. She kept it in a longish bob for so long. It felt like a relief to cut it off the day after Grandpa told her about the cancer. It was time to move forward, time to lift her eyes, time to become herself again.

She closes the door and looks at the melting, grey slush on the hall floor. ‘I’ll clean it up before we leave,’ she says.

‘Majvor will do the cleaning later,’ Grandma says. ‘Don’t think about it now.’ She pats Klara on the cheek and narrows her bright blue eyes. ‘You don’t have to take care of me. And I wouldn’t accept it if you tried. Do you understand?’

The last guests have gone now. They’re alone in the dim hall. Grandma’s pulled on her coat, ready to be picked up by her sister and her sister’s husband, who just went to pick up their car. Klara nods. She knows, has known since watching her grandmother walk across the parking lot after the funeral, so calm and balanced, just like usual.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I understand.’