Now, nine weeks after leaving that country, the wound had almost healed: her mind had not. Pascal, long acquainted with modern warfare and its hideous results, had tried to warn her. And she, not being a fool, had listened to those warnings, of course. Quietly, with reluctance, he had shown her, before they left for Bosnia, some of the pictures he had taken in the past, pictures taken as documentation only, never intended for publication, pictures no magazine or newspaper could ever reproduce.

“You have to be prepared.” He laid out the black and white rectangles in front of her. “You will see this, Gini. And worse.”

He waited, in silence, as she looked down at the photographs.

“That’s the threshold,” he said eventually. “Are you sure, Gini—absolutely sure—that it’s one you want to cross?”

Shaken, nauseated, fighting the physical symptoms of her distress, she had turned away, unable to face him. Their journey to Bosnia was still one week away; he had timed this, she thought, so that it was possible for her, even then, to back out.

“It wouldn’t be cowardice,” he went on gently. “You mustn’t think that. It would simply be a choice. There is a difference, Gini, between the sexes. It is harder for a woman to look at this, to live with this—”

“Why?” She swung around to face him again, sensing he might be right. “Why, Pascal? These things happen. These atrocities exist. Why should women be shielded from them? That can’t be right. I think that’s weak—and I don’t want to be weak.”

“It isn’t necessarily weakness. I don’t think of it that way. These incidents you see here”—he gestured at the photographs—“they are perpetrated by men. So they are something all men have to confront. But if a woman turns away from them, if you turn away, Gini, might that not be a sign of strength?”

She had been moved then by the concern and the gentleness in his face. It was very characteristic of Pascal, she thought, not only to offer her an escape route, but to do so with grace.

The offer had been quietly made, and quietly she refused it. But once they reached Bosnia, Pascal did attempt to shield her at first. There were dangers he, if alone, might have risked, to which he would not expose her. He was careful what she saw, and tried to ensure that, like a plant susceptible to frost damage, she was gradually hardened off.

It took Gini less than a week to understand that this process, which he never admitted but observed meticulously, was hampering their work. And so, almost from the first, it became necessary for her to act. She, who had had no secrets from Pascal, now had many: if he had suspected her true reactions, he would have insisted she return to London at once.

She could disguise fear and fatigue well enough. It was harder to disguise the tears, and hardest of all to hide the pain and mounting incomprehension that lay behind the tears. Day by day she would discover new devices to deceive him—and they had to be rigorously employed, day and night (no weakening when she lay in his arms and could not sleep), for Pascal was quick, sensitive, and attuned to her. Just one glance, one wrong inflection, one gesture, and he would begin to see the truth.