Klara shrugs and turns around. She doesn’t have the energy to think about it more now. Doesn’t have room to care about herself. Gabriella is the one who needs help now. Besides, she is feeling better.

‘Should I take the room on the right?’ she asks as she heads towards the guest rooms.

*

Maria finds some fish fillets in the freezer and throws together a béchamel sauce, which she pours over the fish and some spinach and puts it all in the oven and then, much to Klara’s hidden delight, opens another bottle of wine.

Klara knows the wine calms her and makes the struggle a little easier, keeps her from falling back into that dark hole again. For a moment, she succeeds in pushing away her thoughts about Grandpa and what happened to Gabriella, and instead can focus on just sitting in this beautiful kitchen with Maria, while the smell of fish in the oven starts to fill the air.

‘Sogliole alla Casanova,’ Maria says finally, as she serves up fish to Klara. ‘A good recipe for when you receive an unexpected guest.’

It’s not until they’ve cleared the table, Maria has headed for her bed, and Klara is smoking a cigarette on the balcony outside the guest room that those thoughts wash over her again. She feels snow swirling in the darkness, melting against her skin. Sees Grandpa’s face in his casket and can almost feel Grandma’s dry hand in her own.

She hasn’t called her yet. She was supposed to call as soon as she got to Stockholm. But then all of this happened. Gabriella pushed onto the ground outside her office. Her own escape from the police. Maria’s kindness. Gabi’s letter.

Klara sneaks back into the kitchen. Just one more glass of wine. Tomorrow she won’t drink at all.

She opens the fridge door and helps herself to the already open bottle. Tomorrow she’ll book tickets to Brussels.

It’s been a long time since she was there. She shivers at the thought of what happened before she left the city that she called home for many years, at the thought of what happened to her father and Mahmoud.

Her pulse starts to race; her chest tightens. She swallows half the glass in one gulp. Brussels. It’s as if she feels a purely physical resistance to returning to the city which she’d once been so fond of.

She has only one friend left there now. One she’s thought about an absurd amount lately, and who she can’t seem to avoid, even if she wanted to. It must be more than a coincidence.

George. Is she really going to contact George Lööw again?