“Yes, it was. Once. Why don’t we change the subject?”

“Sure.”

There was a brief silence. Tom dried a saucepan and some plates while Gini grimly scrubbed and rinsed. She would be fine, she told herself, if she could just concentrate on this small, menial task. Then Tom did the one thing she would never have expected, the one thing she could not deal with at all.

Blushing again, and with a gauche clumsiness that reminded her of him as a much younger boy, he put his arm around her shoulders and apologized. He said he knew it was crass, and he shouldn’t have raised the subject, and he was sorry he had, but someone—well, his girlfriend, actually—had told him he had to get in touch with other people’s feelings, so he had been making an effort, and it seemed to be working, kind of, and he hadn’t meant to be intrusive, but Gini did look so different that he felt he had to say something…

She began to cry. She could see that her tears distressed Tom, but she was powerless to stop them. Tom drew her to the table. He brought her a handful of Kleenex. When she saw how agitated he had become, she battled the tears, and finally controlled them. Seeing her grow calmer, Tom grew kinder still. He made her some coffee, then he sat down beside her and took her hand.

“Tell me,” he said. “You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone else, I promise. I understand. What made you cry?”

“It wasn’t you, Tom.” Gini squeezed his hand, then released it. “Please don’t blame yourself. You were very kind. It’s just—in Bosnia I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t let myself. So it’s as if the tears stored themselves up. They waited till I got home—and now I suddenly remember something, and they begin, and I can’t stop them. That’s all.”

“What do you remember?” He looked at her gravely, and Gini was touched. She could see that, half-boy, half-adult, he was trying to act as he considered proper for a man.

“Ugly things I saw. People dying. Wounds. You watch the news on TV, Tom. You can imagine. I’d seen those programs too, before I went, obviously. I’d seen Pascal’s photographs. I knew what I’d find. I thought I was prepared. Only when you see it, stand by it, for months at a time—when you know that nothing you do, and nothing you write, is going to alter it…” She bent her head.

He frowned. “Why did you want to go there, Gini? Why cover wars? Was it because your father did? Because he won that Pulitzer Prize thing? Or Pascal, maybe? So you could work with him, be together?”

“All of those things, I guess, Tom.” She sighed. “I don’t know anymore. All I know is—I couldn’t go back to Bosnia. I’ll never write about another war.”

“I expect you will,” Tom said in an encouraging tone. “I read those pieces you wrote. They were really moving. When Mum read that one from Mostar, she cried, and—”