The voice erupted from nowhere, and resonated in my skull. It was male, booming, commanding. A few of the men started mumbling responses, but the voice quietened them.

‘Please be seated.’

Groping in the dark, I lowered myself to the floor with the others.

‘Now listen,’ said the voice from out of the darkness. ‘Listen.’

After a few seconds, it began to speak again, but it was now talking in an African language, and the tone was completely flat, with equal stress on all syllables. An incantation of some sort? For the first few seconds, it seemed almost comical, like something out of a Rider Haggard story. But as the voice droned on, the words merging into one endless stream of sound, it started to gather force. Although I didn’t understand a word of it, part of my mind began to enter the stream and try to decipher or imagine meanings, until I was drifting along, my eyes half-glazed, my face covered in cooling sweat, transfixed by this eerie, disconnected chant. The voice seemed to be talking to me about events in my past. Yes, that was right - Anna. I remembered now. That day she kissed me back. All the world blazing in light - the future stretching ahead of us. No war now. Home to England. ‘What will you do in England?’ she had asked me. ‘What will you do now the great dragon has been slain?’ And then the direction of the voice shifted a little, and I could see myself running into the clinic, the Russian soldiers, her body on the stretcher, the red wound and the closed lids. But her face wasn’t her own, it was Isabelle’s and at this horrific realization the floor started shaking and I looked up and the ceiling was, too, and there was light up there, light coming from the ceiling, three sources of light, and as they came closer, drifting down, I saw that they were in the shape of bodies - that they were bodies, in fact, humans in light form, and they reached the ground and one of them leaned in, and he had a strong face, a strong African face, and he asked me what my troubles were and I started crying because I couldn’t tell him, I couldn’t tell him all the troubles I had because I didn’t know where to begin and he took me by the arm and told me it was all right, it would be all right in a little while, but I couldn’t stop crying and it was taking me over, I was heaving and my lungs were on fire, and I couldn’t get the next breath out to tell him, let go of me, don’t hold me, I can’t breathe, my back, hit my back, I can’t breathe, let me breathe, help me breathe . . .