Chapter 22: Her Name on the Buzzer

I woke on the sofa with a foot in my lap and a stiff neck, and a smell of coffee coming down the hall.

Someone had put a blanket over me during the night.

Nobody had put me in the bedroom, because I had said, at some point after midnight, that I wanted to stay where it began.

The glass of water stood on the floor, empty.

I found Nils in the stairwell at seven in his boxer shorts and a jumper, with a label maker.

"Don't look," he said.

"I'm looking."

"It's not finished."

On the wall by the street door, beside the brass buzzer plate, there were three slots.

HASSE. OSTERMANN.

And in the third, in neat black letters on a white strip, he had typed my name.

SELLNER.

I stood on the cold tiles and read it three times.

"I can take it off," Nils said quickly. "If it's too much. I only thought, if it's in the stairwell, she can't pretend she's a guest."

"It's not too much."

"Florian said to ask first."

"I'm asking you to leave it."

His whole face changed.

I kissed him in the stairwell, in front of the postman, who coughed and put a stack of leaflets through the wrong slot.

When I came upstairs Florian was standing at the stove in his dark shirt, and he held out a mug without turning.

"The lease on this flat is mine," he said. "You'll want your name on it."

"Florian."

"It's not a speech. There's a form on the table. Sign it when you like, or don't."

I looked at the form.

It added my name beside his, on a flat I had lived in for less than two weeks.

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