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say.
    “. . . graaa’ . . . ’eet . . . ard . . .”
    She is still dazed by the suddenness of what has happened, as though it has just happened now.
    Bending down, Camille listens carefully, he pretends to understand, he tries to smile. Anne sounds as though she is talking through a mouthful of scalding soup. Camille can hear only mangled syllables, but he concentrates and after a minute he begins to decipher words, to guess at meaning . . . Mentally, he translates. It is amazing how quickly we can adapt. To anything. Amazing, and a little sad.
    “Grabbed,” he hears, “beat . . . hard.”
    Anne’s eyebrows, her eyes grow wide with terror as though the man were once more standing in front of her, about to club her with the rifle butt. Camille gently reaches out and rests a hand on her shoulder, Anne flinches and gives a strangled cry.
    “Camille . . .” she says.
    She turns her head, it is difficult to make out what she says. The words are a sibilant hiss through three shattered teeth – the upper and lower incisors on the left hand side – that make her look like she is thirty years older, like Fantine in a crude production of “ Les Misérables ”. Though she has begged the nurses, no-one has dared to give her a mirror.
    In fact, though she can barely move, she tries to cover her mouth with the back of her hand when she speaks. More often than not she fails and her mouth looks like a gaping wound, the lips bruised and bluish.
    “. . . going to operate . . .?”
    This is what Camille thinks he hears. She starts to cry again; her tears seem to come independently of her words, with no apparent logic they suddenly well up and course down her cheeks. Anne’s face is a mask of mute astonishment.
    ‘”We don’t know yet . . .” Camille says, his voice low. “Try to relax. Everything is going to be fine . . .”
    But already Anne’s mind is elsewhere. She turns her head away, as though she were ashamed. Her voice is barely audible now. Camille thinks he can make out the words “Not like this . . .” She does not want anyone to see her in this state. She manages to turn onto her stomach. Camille lays a hand on her shoulder, but Anne does not react, she stubbornly looks away, her body shaken by ragged sobs.
    “Do you want me to stay?”
    There is no answer. Not knowing what to do, Camille stays. After a long moment, Anne shakes her head at something though it is impossible to know what – at what is happening, at what has happened, at the grotesque farce that can engulf our lives without warning, at the injustice victims cannot help but see as personal. It is impossible to ask her. It is too soon. They are not in the same moment. There is nothing they can say.
    It is impossible to tell whether she is asleep. Slowly, she turns onto her back, eyes closed. And does not move again.
    There.
    Camille gazes at her, listening intently, comparing her breathing to that when she is asleep, a sound he knows better than anyone in the world. He has spent hours watching her sleep. In the early days, he would get up in the middle of the night to sketch her features that looked like a swimmer’s, because during the day he could never quite capture the subtle magic of her face. He has made hundreds of drawings, spent countless hours attempting to reproduce the purity of her lips, her eyelids. Or sketched her body silhouetted in the shower. His magnificent failures had taught him just how important she is: though he can draw an almost photographic likeness of anyone in a few scant minutes, there is something inexpressible, something indefinable about Anne that eludes his gaze, his senses, his powers of observation. The woman who lies swollen and bandaged before him now has nothing of the magic, all that remains is the outer shell, and ugly, terribly prosaic body.
    It is this that, as the minutes pass, fuels Camille’s anger.
    From time to time, Anne wakes with a start, gives a little cry, glances round wildly and in those