At the very moment the plane bounces onto the runway at Zaventem Airport just outside Brussels, she opens her eyes. She must have fallen asleep as soon as she sat down because she has no memory of the flight itself.
Klara looks out through the cabin window and thinks of all the times she’s landed here in the rain. For more than three years, whenever she landed at Zaventem, followed all the people dressed in business attire pulling carry-ons up the passenger bridge and into the larger terminal, past juice bars, tax-free and chocolate shops, and then into the arrival hall, she felt like she was going home.
Now as she rises from her seat and follows that stream of people, all she feels is a weight in her chest and a headache coming on. At one of the small Lavazza kiosks she buys a double espresso and burns her mouth as she knocks it back in two gulps. The sleep on the plane didn’t help: on the contrary, she’s not used to sleeping during the day, and her head feels groggy and heavy.
Halfway through the terminal, she takes off her backpack, throws the cardboard cup into the trash and sits down on a bench near one of the gates. She pulls her phone out of her jacket pocket, scrolls down to George Lööw’s name and sits for a long time with her thumb hovering above the phone, struggling with contradictory impulses.
With a sigh, she locks her phone and puts it back in her pocket. It’ll have to wait. Instead, she raises her eyes and looks out over the crowd of stressed travellers. And that’s when she sees him. On the other side of the hall, about fifty metres away, a cap pulled down over his eyes and a jacket draped over his knees, a man is looking in her direction. When she looks at him, he turns his eyes away. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t think more about it. But now, after Gabi and Bromma, it makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. She recognizes him from the plane ride here.
Her legs tremble as she turns around and walks the last stretch through the terminal building into the arrivals hall. She stops at regular intervals to turn back, and every time she does the man with the cap is behind her. Did she really think she’d scared them away at Bromma?
She starts to hurry and when she reaches Arrivals she turns again. There is only one exit. The man in the cap has to come this way.
The sudden flash of energy she felt before, which made her want to confront them, has disappeared completely during the flight.
Now she looks around at the people waiting here for travellers: taxi drivers in ties with handwritten signs. Parents waiting for teenagers, friends and spouses and a Muslim family with balloons and a long banner in Arabic. The stream of people is swift and minutes pass by with no sight of her pursuer.
She feels a blend of relief and disappointment. What was she going to do if he did come out here?
Maybe she was wrong. Perhaps Bromma just made her hyper-vigilant about anyone with a vaguely Eastern European look and shifty eyes.
*
Full of doubt now, she turns and walks through the automatic doors towards the taxis. It’s four in the afternoon. She doesn’t even know where to go, just knows she needs a glass of wine as soon as possible.
The taxi queue takes less than five minutes.
‘Place Sablon,’ she says to the driver. It surprises her that she’s requested that flashy and touristy square with its chocolate and antique shops, rather than the neighbourhood of Ixelles where she lived for three years. But the thought of her old neighbourhood just makes her anxiety worse. Better to stick to the tourist areas, better if she doesn’t let the city really sink in. Better to have a soft landing.
She stares worriedly out the rear window as the taxi rolls past the parking lots and airport hotels. Suddenly it hits her that in one of those cars behind her slowly gliding through the afternoon rain there could be a person who’s following her. She shudders as she turns forward again.
The Brussels Ring in, past NATO headquarters, the grey and gritty streets on the outskirts of the Schaerbeek district, and then past Square Ambiorix. She bends forward to get a view of the apartment building at this small park’s south-eastern corner, where she sublet a furnished one-bedroom for the first three months she lived in Brussels. The taxi swings away from the square and over towards the EU institutions. It feels like another life now, among the restaurants and bars of Rue Archimède. Everything looks familiar; she knows everything about this life, the lunches and the smiles, the suits, the dresses. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to imagine that she was ever a part of it, that the person who experienced all that is the same person sitting in this taxi.
Then they’re at the very heart of the EU – the Schuman roundabout with the European Council headquarters and the Commission’s star-shaped building, the Berlaymont, on the right. She feels a little ache in her stomach when the traffic stops just in front of the roundabout, and she sees all the stressed-out people in suits on the sidewalks with their hands full of folders and binders, phones pressed to their ears.
That could have been her. That was her. Until Mahmoud contacted her two years ago. Before Paris and London and last summer. That was her before the anxiety and the sleepless nights and the grief.
Now a pit opens inside her again, and she can feel herself falling and fast. She bends forward between the seats towards the driver.
‘Drive to Place Luxembourg instead,’ she says.
It’s closer. She needs a drink right now if she’s ever going to be able to handle all this. She knew it would be difficult to come back here, has been worried since yesterday. But this? It’s worse than she expected. She shouldn’t be alone. She needs someone to talk to.
She takes out her phone and finds George Lööw’s number again. This wasn’t how she thought she’d contact him again, not under these circumstances. But what choice does she have?
I’m in Brussels, she writes briefly. At Ralph’s in half an hour. Can we meet?