Slowly, Yassim turns back to him again. ‘I thought things would work out in some way, thought I’d be able to stay here longer. But the call I just got… It’s impossible. I have to leave sooner than I thought.’

‘But what about Europe?’ Jacob asks quietly. ‘Surely you’re coming back?’

Yassim smiles and leans over to him, kisses him gently on the cheek. ‘I’ll always come back,’ he says. ‘And we’ll go to Europe together, later. I promise.’

*

For Jacob, October still feels summery, but in comparison to the suffocating heat they had before, it feels cool. He no longer feels like he’s going to die every time he’s forced out into the sun.

Two weeks without Yassim go by, and Jacob can hardly remember what he looks like. But he remembers Yassim’s smell, his voice, especially the strict one, the one that makes Jacob blush and do whatever Yassim wants. Almost anything he wants.

Myriam is furious, of course, when he calls and informs her that Yassim has disappeared again, and that he still hasn’t managed to install the flash drive. Her voice terrifies him, and it scares him even more when he realizes he’s not going to tell her about their planned European trip. She expects him to tell her stuff like that, to tell her everything. So why doesn’t he?

To protect Yassim, to gain some time. Because he doesn’t feel sure about her, and because he’s slowly starting to realize that Myriam needs him. He does have a few cards to play in the middle of all this hopelessness. If she exposes him, she’ll also lose him, so she’ll just have to understand that this will take some time. That insight reduces the intensity of her threat.

‘This isn’t a fucking game, Jacob,’ she says. ‘You’re hanging out with a terrorist. When will you get that through your thick skull?’

When she says that, it sounds so convincing, so obvious. Why else would she do all this? The weight of that insight threatens to drown him completely. He’s somehow become an accessory, living close to a terrorist, sleeping with a terrorist, in love with a terrorist. There is no context that can justify it – not if you know.

At the same time he’s seen the photographs Yassim took in Syria, heard him talk about them. He’s looked more deeply into Yassim’s eyes than into anyone else’s; has felt his hands on him, his skin against his own, and what Jacob saw and felt is not consistent with what Myriam tells him. For one moment, he believes it can’t possibly be true, it’s impossible that Yassim is lying and the assurance of that calms him, decreases the pressure around his chest.

Then he remembers the gun beneath the table and he’s back at square one again.

*