‘Go home, you,’ she says. ‘You’ve done your duty for today.’

*

It’s dark by the time he reaches Mar Mikhael, and the lights of the traffic and restaurants dance around him. He stops outside his front door and gazes up the street, towards the sidewalk outside the bars where people are gathered for drinks, buzzing with laughter. Here the riots downtown seem to be just gossip and fodder for conversation, hardly even real. But this is how Beirut is, they say. Even during the wars people gathered in bars in calmer neighbourhoods. Life goes on, even under difficult circumstances. For a moment he considers crossing the street to get a cocktail at Internazionale. But he’s hungry and tired. With a sigh he turns around and walks up the stairs to his apartment.

It takes a while to find his key and even longer to realize he can’t turn it because the door is already unlocked.

He freezes. Did he really forget to lock it this morning? That’s unlike him.

Cautiously, he pushes the door open to the dark apartment. The curtains on the windows and the balcony door are pulled open; the light from the neon signs and an unusually bright moon falls across the mosaic floor. Everything is as he left it and he lets out a small sigh of relief. He just forgot to lock up.

He walks into the kitchen and takes a bottle of water from the fridge, unscrews the top, and he’s just lifting a glass out of the dish rack when he hears a woman’s voice behind him.

‘You’re late, Matti,’ she says. ‘I almost started to despair.’

He drops the glass and it feels as if ten seconds pass before it reaches the floor and explodes into a thousand shards, before his life explodes into just as many shards, which will never, ever be put back together again.

*

The woman is standing in the darkness next to the door to the living room, just a few metres away. A sharp, thin stripe of light from the street illuminates the left side of her face, making her look ghostly, almost as if she glows. She’s in her mid-thirties, looks Middle Eastern. Thin, with short, dark hair. Slowly she takes a step closer to him, and he sees she’s wearing tight jeans, a black tank top and a red-striped, button-down shirt.

‘Who are you?’ he whispers.

‘Come on, Matti,’ she says, cocking her head to the side. ‘We have a lot to talk about.’

She holds out a hand to him and gestures towards the living room. He stands frozen in place and just shakes his head. ‘I want you to leave,’ he says clumsily.