I went to fetch my plate of food and sat down next to Anthea.

‘Handsome, beautiful—I suppose they’re words from before, from when things happened?’ I asked her.

She gazed at me for a while, then looked away.

‘I was beautiful,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I still am, I’d need a mirror. My hair has gone grey, but that doesn’t mean I’m old, the women in my family go grey early. My memories are muddled, I think I was twenty-eight the year they locked us up. At first, I still took the trouble to do my hair, and I was very upset about losing my brushes.’

She spoke in a half-whisper, as if to herself, but I knew she was talking to me.

‘And then my dress wore out. It was a pretty summer frock, very fashionable, with flounces, in that delicate fabric that doesn’t last very long. I was one of the first to wear these sort of tunics we make. Now, there are no dresses from before left, not even any scraps, they’re all worn out down to the last thread. You can’t imagine what they were like.’

‘Being beautiful, was that for the men?’

I was almost sure it was, but I sometimes heard the women say otherwise.

‘Yes. Some women say that it is for ourselves. What on earth can we do with it? I could have loved myself whether I was hunchbacked or lame, but to be loved by others, you had to be beautiful.’

‘Am I beautiful?’

I saw her smile, but her smile was heart-rending.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. You’d probably have been one of the prettiest girls because you wouldn’t have had that sulky, angry expression. You’d have laughed, you’d have provoked the boys.’

‘Sometimes I provoke the young guard,’ I burst out.

This I had just understood.

When I told myself stories, I always went to sit close to the bars, on the side where he paced up and down. He walked slowly, keeping a close watch on what was going on in the cage, as he always did. Crouching down, facing him, I kept still, following him with my eyes. I watched him, and because he saw everything, he couldn’t have been unaware that I was watching him. Just a girl, sitting there, wearing her shapeless tunic. My hair was long and I kept it tied back at the nape of my neck; other than that, I have no idea what I looked like. I didn’t even know what colour my eyes were until Anthea told me, later, and I had no idea what that meant, to be one of the prettiest girls. It didn’t occur to me that none of the women was beautiful: they were clean, we kept the little soap we were given for washing our bodies and our hair, which was always clean. Most of us had long hair, because we had nothing to cut it with. Nor did we have anything for cutting our nails, which were always breaking when they were too long, and we looked sad, except when there were outbursts of nervous giggles. I don’t know what expression I wore when I looked at the guard: I was totally preoccupied, I was all eyes. He never looked at me: I was sure he knew I was staring at him continually and that it made him feel awkward.