That evening, the questions began to rear their heads again: where were we? What were we going to do?

Was this Earth?

They asked me how long it had been from one sunset to the next: by my clock it had been just over twenty-two and a half hours. Clearly, that didn’t prove a thing, because we had no idea what my heartbeat actually was. None of the women had ever seen such a wilderness of stones in such a mild climate, but they all admitted that they hadn’t travelled much and that in their past lives they hadn’t bothered much with geography. Their knowledge was confined to their immediate surroundings and a few local walks near their home towns. Of course, they’d seen films set in countries they’d never visited, but the Earth was so vast! It did seem odd that the vegetation was so sparse—a few clumps of familiar-looking small trees such as holm oak, boxtree and larch, but oh dear! they found it so hard to remember, and an unusual grass. There were no wild flowers, which meant nothing, since it might not have been the right season. They were struck by the absence of insects but were unable to deduce much from that. The terrain rolled towards the horizon in long sweeping undulations but it would be exaggerating to describe it as hilly. But how could we cope with the idea that this wasn’t Earth?

‘We must look for a town,’ they decided.

But what if the towns belonged to the guards? What if we were recaptured? There were countless arguments, which turned out to be in vain, because the fact was we never did find any towns. We were in no hurry to move: the joy of being in the open air, bathing in the river and eating as much as we wanted made us lazy, and we spent several days in idle discussions which the various pleasures soon interrupted.

I no longer felt the furious hostility of before; my anger had subsided. No longer seething with hatred and trying to find fault with my companions, I realised that it was difficult for them to pursue a train of thought for long, or to follow an argument through to its conclusion. Anthea was the only one capable of doing this. Some of the things she said made me realise that their inability to think clearly was the result of having been drugged for a long time. Perhaps I myself could have been a bit cleverer and thought harder than I did when, later, I found myself alone. For instance, it didn’t occur to me, after finding the road, to follow it in each direction. That only occurred to me recently, now I’m no longer able to do so. What’s more, they weren’t very well educated: they were women who, before these mysterious events, had run their homes and raised their children or, if they worked, were shop assistants, waitresses and checkout girls—jobs that were explained to me gradually. Only Anthea had studied: having been a typist for a few years, she went back to college to become a nurse and had qualified just before we were imprisoned. She’d forgotten a lot. The other women lacked foresight and were disorganised. They quickly became routine-bound; they’d never developed skills they hadn’t needed. On the whole, that didn’t change, and Dorothy, Anthea and I soon took responsibility for our existence.