‘I guess you were also mixed up in what happened last summer?’ Maria continues.

Klara nods. ‘You can definitely say that. I’ – she takes another gulp of wine – ‘I wasn’t doing very well.’

Maria just looks at her calmly. ‘A person can’t always be doing well,’ she says. ‘Sometimes you need your friends.’

Klara can feel tears fill her eyes. There’s something so warm and genuinely empathetic about Maria, something that makes her think Maria knows what she’s talking about.

‘Gabi needs me now,’ Klara says quietly. ‘She’s done so much for me. And now she needs me.’

Maria places her wine glass on top of an enormous book about Dutch architecture that lies, along with several other books about design, on the low coffee table. She stands up and walks over to the baby grand. She lifts the lid carefully and sticks her hand inside.

‘Dramatic,’ she says. ‘I know. But I have a gift for drama, as you may have noticed.’

Slowly she pulls out her hand with a small envelope dangling between her fingers.

‘Since Alf passed, nobody plays the piano. A good place to hide mysterious messages, don’t you think?’

Maria puts the envelope on the coffee table. Klara can feel her skin pucker with goosebumps as she takes a deep breath. The envelope is addressed to her.

13–14 November

Beirut

Yassim’s hand on his elbow almost doesn’t feel real, and Jacob keeps glancing over at him to make sure as they walk down the steps and along the footpaths that lead through the campus down to the sea.

‘Where are we going?’ Jacob says.

He realizes it’s the first thing he’s said. Yassim smiles and turns to him, looks into his eyes.

‘A tunnel down to the beach,’ he says. ‘Not so many people there.’

Jacob nods. The American University’s own enclosed beach club, on the other side of Cornichen, the ultimate, exaggerated triumph of the privileged. Nothing summarizes Beirut better than the bullet holes in the locker rooms at the private, insanely expensive beach clubs. Hedonism, privilege and violence locked in an eternal dance along the privatized coastal strip.

He feels relieved that they’re headed in that direction, away from the main gate and Hamra, where there’s a risk that Myriam or one of her companions might be waiting with their threats.

‘You were gone for so long,’ Jacob says.

They’re in the tunnel now and the calm of the campus is replaced by the roar of the cars on Cornichen. Yassim tries to smile, but it’s a half-hearted attempt; there’s no joy there, just the other look, hard and bottomless, which sometimes appears in his eyes.

‘I’m a ghost,’ he says. ‘You know that.’

‘But you could have said something, so I had some idea when you were coming back.’