They climbed into it together at once. It was like being aboard a sailing ship. From its pillows, they looked out across the gallery balustrade to the magnificent window, to the tops of trees, to a scudding sky, to the lights and sounds of the invisible city that thrummed five floors below. They drank wine there, then ate supper there, then made love there, then slept.

“I am content,” Pascal said, gathering her into his arms the next morning, “I have never been so content.”

Gini was also content. She liked the word, which seemed to link them in its embrace. She thought of all the years since she had first met Pascal, and realized with a shock that they comprised almost half her life. She thought of the weeks when she had first known him, and first loved him, in Beirut. She thought of their years apart, and their reunion. She thought: I want for nothing. Everything I love and value and esteem is here. Oh, yes, I am content.

She felt no unease, not the least premonition, not even a prick of superstition that the beneficent gods who dispense bounty to humans have a grim habit of giving with the right hand, then immediately taking back with the left. Five months after moving into that apartment, she was granted what had always been her other wish: she was sent to Sarajevo, to cover the war in Bosnia. She went with Pascal, and worked there with Pascal. He had operated from war zones before, many times; she had not.

Six months later, she returned alone. Pascal, unaware of the extent of the change in her, agreed that her return to London was the best course. He would remain in Bosnia for a brief period—at most three weeks, a month. He had now been there, alone, for nine weeks, and the date of his return was still not fixed. At first, although Gini was careful not to tell Pascal this, she was glad of the delay. She thought it would give her time—time to cure herself of the aftermath of Bosnia and what she saw there, time to cure the nightmares, the sleeplessness, time to cure herself.

Wars could be exorcised, she told herself as the weeks went by. It must, somehow, be possible—not to forget, she would have despised herself had she ever forgotten—to distance herself. But death—the sound, taste, sight, and smell of death—pursued her. It prevented rest, jerked her awake with a cry of fear in the lonely morning hours; it seeped into this lovely apartment and soiled its contentment; it pursued her out into the ordinary streets.

She had, as had many of the reporters out there, been physically wounded while in Bosnia. One evening, in a small village set high in a mountain pass, on her way with Pascal to Mostar (and above all she feared to think of Mostar) they had been caught in a mortar attack. A piece of shrapnel had lodged in her upper arm. It was a minor injury of which she was almost ashamed, given the maimings she had witnessed; it was quickly, and with reasonable efficiency, patched up.