That’s all, but it’s enough to reawaken everything he’s tried so hard to forget. Both Yassim and Myriam.

He sits with the phone in his hand, reading the message over and over again. How should he answer? What do you say to a ghost?

He writes and rewrites; the words feel too big, as if they won’t fit on the screen. Finally, he sends only a large, red heart emoji. Nothing else is needed. Yassim knows. Jacob knows he knows.

The feeling settles in, it’s there when he wakes up the next morning, all through the day, even when he leaves the office after the sun sets. He buys a bottle of red wine in the small shop beneath his apartment. He needs peace and escape. He has to stop thinking about this dilemma, about who Yassim is. The risk he’s taking. If he’s not a terrorist, then who is he?

The key to the door doesn’t work, and he’s just about to put the wine bottle on the mosaic floor and grab hold of it with both hands when he hears a voice from within the shadows of the stairwell.

‘When were you planning to tell me he contacted you?’

Jacob turns around and sees Myriam in the shadows leaning against the wall.

‘Don’t think you can play both sides, Matti,’ she says. ‘You’re surely not so naive you thought we weren’t watching your phone?’ She moves towards him with those icy eyes flashing.

‘You landed yourself in the middle of this shit, habibi,’ she continues. ‘I know your head is spinning now. How can you have your cake and eat it too? Let me answer that question for you: you already ate it. The only things left are the crumbs of your life. Scrape them up and do what you can with them.’

He looks at her, shocked, confused. ‘I haven’t met with him,’ he says.

‘You will be crushed if you continue to waver on this,’ she says. ‘You have to understand that now.’

He nods slowly. All he wants to really do is disappear.

‘The second he contacts you, you contact me, do you understand? If you wait any longer, I promise you your life as you’ve known it will end.’

He understands nothing, and she already knows everything. But before he can ask, she’s disappeared into the shadows again.

*

Everything is quiet. A month goes by and Jacob starts to think Yassim might never contact him again. He’s sat with his phone in hand writing text messages over and over again. But never pressed send on them. He already knows that if he does meet Yassim he can’t break the rules, can’t force Yassim to be anything more than a ghost.