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accompanied by the hearty clunking of billiard balls. Where every street lamp seems to shine on a prison yard. Where bicycles are parked in bushes and people drink wine from dirty glasses. Where young girls wear the same denim jacket and walk around hand in hand as though they’re scared. Scared of other people. Scared of the city. Scared of life. Here, in this city, I run barefoot across building sites and watch the mud rising up between my toes.’
    ‘Infantile and revolting,’ said Mia. ‘Whoever wrote it should be locked up.’
    ‘Exactly what the judge thought,’ said Moritz. ‘Eight months for sedition.’
    He hooked a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and pushed it between his lips. Mia’s hand shot out and whisked it away.
    ‘Where did you get hold of that?’
    ‘Honestly, Mia,’ said Moritz. ‘Where do you think? I don’t suppose you brought a light?’

Smoke
     
    WHEN DRISS WAS little, she wanted to grow up like Mia. Now she is fully grown and sitting at the top of the stairs barely two paces from Mia’s door, beneath which lies a mat, placed there as a tribute to a bygone age. Driss knows exactly where to sit in order to get the best view from the top-floor window. The apartment block is built on a slope, and the city lies at Driss’s feet. It is an excellent place for dreaming. Most people don’t come up this far, but Driss has brought a bucket and a bottle of disinfectant, just in case.
    Her dreams unfold in two-dimensional Technicolor, like old-fashioned films. She usually casts Mia in the lead. Today, for example, she is watching Mia introduce herself to Kramer behind this very door. At first Driss doesn’t really understand the conversation, despite Pollie’s efforts to read to her regularly from
The Healthy Mind
. Kramer seems to be talking about the battle against the People’s Right to Illness: he has chalked up some important victories in the anti-terrorist campaign. Lizzie’s voice has a habit of rising half an octave when the PRI is in the headlines, but Mia listens quietly and asks a few questions. Kramer has never met anyone who understands him so well.
    After a while, they fall silent. Driss likes to replay this moment in her head. She zooms in and watches at half-speed as Mia and Kramer, who are sitting side by side on the sofa, turn to each other slowly. They don’t gaze into each other’s eyes; each is focused on the other’s mouth. Kramer puts an arm around Mia. If Driss were to do the same, her fingers would touch the white front door of Mia’s apartment. She feels the hairs on her slender neck stand on end, she closes her eyes and holds her breath. In a moment, Kramer will lean forward and kiss Mia as people used to in movies when they didn’t know about the risk of oral infection.
    Driss feels a tingling in her nostrils. She opens her eyes and sniffs. There is a strange smell. She scans the landing and takes two more vigorous sniffs. No doubt about it: smoke. In an instant she is on her feet and racing down the stairs.
    ‘Fire!’ she shouts. ‘Fire!’
    At the end of the landing, behind the white door, Mia is lying on the sofa with the ideal inamorata, a cigarette between her lips and a blackened match on her thigh.
    ‘This is it,’ says Mia, taking a long drag on the cigarette, ‘this is exactly how Moritz smelt.’
    ‘You’d think he were here,’ says the ideal inamorata, reaching out two fingers to take the cigarette.

No More Mediation
     
    DRESSED IN HER black robes, Sophie looks not unlike a nun without a veil. She has come to accept the likeness and knows it could be worse. At least when she puts the statute book under her bottom she no longer looks like a nun who’s too small for her chair. The furniture in the courtroom dates back to an era when judges were more stately. The problem is exacerbated by the ergonomic guidelines for workplace safety, which haven’t been properly adhered to. On some days, admittedly few in number, Sophie hates her