Sure, it was exciting. And it meant a lot more to Jacob than he’d let on to Simon. And maybe there could have been something more, something that made the word babe seem like a good fit. If Jacob had given in and let go. If he’d abandoned himself to the whole thing. But it moved too fast. Simon started talking about moving in together after just three weeks. Jacob felt the urge to be together all the time too. Felt like he never wanted to leave their bed. But he forced himself, refused to give in to the flesh. That wasn’t what he’d gone to Uppsala for. It wasn’t part of the plan. Not at all. And pretty soon Simon started talking about meeting Jacob’s parents.

‘You could at least tell me about them,’ he’d said. ‘I bet your mother is so glamorous and your father so strict. I bet their sex life is hot.’

That’s when Jacob couldn’t take any more. He couldn’t tell Simon about his parents. He’d left them far, far behind the person he’d become after leaving Eskilstuna, the small town where he grew up. They weren’t a part of who he was, who he was going to be. They didn’t fit into the Uppsala version of Jacob Seger. The diplomat version.

‘Jacob?’

A voice startles him out of this line of thought, and when he looks up he sees a woman in her fifties with grey hair, wearing a thin, navy blue dress, standing in front of him.

‘I’m Agneta Adelheim,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry to make you wait.’

*

Finally, Jacob is sitting in the back seat of a black Volvo, peering out the window as they drive through the suburbs on their way to central Beirut. At first it’s just highways and Hezbollah’s green flags, then slums and blindingly bright sun. As they get closer to the centre, he sees bullet holes and shining glass. Construction cranes rising out of history. In the inner city, it’s all traffic and rotting garbage on the corner of every street.

They get out of the car, go through the front door, climb the stairs. Enter some kind of conference room. Agneta starts talking about the embassy, and how chaotic the situation is. They sit down among the blonde wood tables and steel chairs, which glide silently across the floor when Jacob adjusts his position. They sit across from each other, drinking lukewarm water from bottles with peeling labels.

‘You know this embassy is only temporary?’ she asks. ‘We had to move the Syrian embassy here when the situation in Damascus got too dangerous.’

Jacob nods. He knows all about that, he read up.