On February 11, of all days…

Norah went over to the window, thinking hard, and looked down onto the street. On the other side of the road, someone was trying to squeeze a black station wagon into a ridiculously small parking space. Norah heard the muted laughter of a passing couple through the double-glazed windows.

Given what the woman had said, it seemed only sensible to conclude that she was mentally ill. Norah didn’t know anyone called Arthur Grimm. And she certainly wasn’t intending to do anyone in. But the date. That fucking date. It had to be a coincidence.

Norah decided it was the discrepancy between the woman’s appearance and her words that was troubling her. She hadn’t seemed mentally ill, she’d seemed lucid and controlled. Norah had never come across anyone quite like her before; her interest was piqued. There might be something exciting behind it. She resolved to go in search of the strange fortune teller the next day—to find out who she was and what her story was. Norah was good at that kind of thing; it was her metier. In the meantime she could google the name the woman had mentioned.

Arthur Grimm. Norah screwed up her eyes, trying to think. No, she didn’t know anyone by that name. And yet it rang a bell. Or was she imagining things?

A fraction of a second later, the search engine spat out images of a face so handsome and yet so unnerving that Norah gasped.

5

Norah had dreamt she was alone in an empty world where there was no sign of life—only the occasional bird flying past, far away, out of reach.

Then the birds fell down.

Norah woke on her back in the dank cold of her flat. She was breathing heavily and when she opened her eyes, she had the impression that the ceiling had dropped to no more than a couple of feet above her face. It had rained in the night, staining the road dark and covering the city in a grey haze. Everything looked blurred at the edges, as if the cold and wet had attacked the very substance of things, watering them down to produce grubby pen and ink washes. Inside, Norah felt the same.

Somehow or other she managed to get up and make her way, shivering, into the shower, where she washed off the uneasy feeling with hot water.

Out on the stairs, she was met once more by the smell of mouldy carpet. At the letterboxes, she bumped into the ground-floor neighbour, a small, thin man with suspicious eyes and a crumpled face. She said good morning, but got no reply.

By the time she entered the corner bistro to fortify herself with a cappuccino, she was beginning to feel better.

Three elderly ladies were sitting at the window table over the first coffee and cigarettes of the day. There was a blonde, a redhead and a brunette, like in a bad joke, and they had worn heels, mangy fur coats and broad Viennese accents. Norah sipped her cappuccino, licking the froth from her lips, and stared out at the street, listening to the women’s scathing remarks as they bemoaned the state of the world, the decline of moral standards, the appalling dress taste of passers-by, and the smoking ban—not that they seemed to heed it. Norah was about to ask for the bill when her eye was caught by a young woman walking past the bistro. She was staring at the ground, as if she thought she might just get through life unscathed if she didn’t look at anything or anyone. Her dark blonde hair was tied in a ponytail and she was wearing tight jeans and a pink puffer jacket that accentuated her enormous girth. She looked oddly beautiful and heartrendingly sad, and if Norah had been any good at painting, she’d have liked to paint her portrait—oils on canvas, something classic.