I spent Sunday in my hotel room. I don’t know why I couldn’t sleep on Saturday night, why I watched pay-per-view TV – action films, a romance, a family comedy, porn – why I drank whisky, although I usually stick to beer and wine. It was as if I wanted to get drunk. At any rate, I was drunk when I woke on Sunday morning. I stayed in bed and dozed the day away. I had wanted to call my children, but it was too early, and then it was too late.

I do not remember ever having been drunk, much less having intentionally gotten drunk. Of course I had been around drunk people; my partner Karchinger, raised by his cheerful mother from the Rhineland, could have one too many at firm retreats, and hit on the female interns. I had always looked down on him a little for that. I had also looked down on my wife a little when she was drunk, even though her character and circumstances meant she could not have been an alcoholic. I emphasized this after her accident, not only to the police, but also to the children, who even reproached me – as if the shock of her death weren’t bad enough. But sometimes I had smelled alcohol on her breath, and her stride and speech were shaky. When she came home at night that way, or I found her at home like that, I slept in my study. Her loud snoring then was unbearable.

I was ashamed of myself when I got up in the evening. I went to the gym, ran on the treadmill, and lifted weights. I was alone, and found the switch to turn off the music, then the one to raise the blinds. I had never seen the harbour and the bay this way. The sky was dark, full of clouds piling up into peaks and ridges. In the distance there were flashes of lightning, sometimes in front of the clouds, like bright scribbling, sometimes behind, lighting their rims white, or blue, or green. Whitecaps danced on the black water. No boat, no ship was out.

I showered, dressed, took the lift to the lobby and walked out of the hotel. Like the bay, the streets were empty. An ambulance drove past, lights flashing and sirens wailing, as if the coming storm had already claimed its first victim. Otherwise it was still. There was no wind. The waves were not choppy, but billowing in from the sea.