So, day by day, she perfected herself; she put her heart on ice; she made herself numb, turned herself into an efficient walking-talking automaton, an automaton who looked at ruined buildings and ruined bodies and ruined lives, and got on with the job. To do so, she found, was to un-sex herself. It was as if something fluent and fluid in her body began to dry up; made her dry-eyed, bloodless, without appetite for food. When Pascal embraced her now, there was no immediate rush of response; she felt like a husk, a dried, withered thing. It came as no surprise to her, although she was on the pill, when her periods stopped: women bled—but she was no longer a woman, she was a robot.

Some of these symptoms, of course, no lover could mistake. She could see that Pascal was hurt by them, and redoubled her efforts at once. She began to fake her orgasms, and Pascal quietly allowed her to do this for two weeks. At the end of that time he took her in his arms, waited for the confession that did not come, and then said:

“Gini. Never do that again. I won’t have you lie to me. And above all, I won’t have you lie to me in bed.”

She could hear pain, and regret, and anxiety in his voice—also a certain sternness. On that occasion she did briefly weep, and Pascal held her while she did so. After that he questioned her, and tried to persuade her to speak, but when she avoided his questions or denied any reason for concern, he ceased to press her. He made a private decision to accept her reticence, she saw, and said nothing, though she knew that this scrupulousness, both verbal and physical, cost him dearly.

Professionally, impressed by the coolness she showed, he did gradually accede to her requests. Ratchet by ratchet, he increased the risks. He allowed her to bear witness; he took her on the necessary stations: the rape victims, the dead, the dying, and the mutilations of death. She thought he could see what she found the hardest—after Mostar, he was certainly in no doubt; he could see that while she had learned to look at dismemberment, the grief of parents and the injury to children remained hard for her. The tears would spring to her eyes, and her hands would shake. He tried to avoid places and situations where such encounters were unavoidable, but even Pascal could not entirely succeed in this. In that country, predictions and plans could never be sure: mortar fire would suddenly open up in a remote and apparently deserted mountain pass; death could be across the next street.

The proximity of death, the skull beneath the skin, the abomination around the corner, that was, for Gini, the essence of Bosnia. And it returned with her to London, although writing to Pascal, and telephoning Pascal, she never mentioned this.

“You are sleeping, darling? You’re eating properly?” he would ask, and she would say yes, of course, her appetite was back to normal, she’d slept for ten hours straight the previous night.