Later, in my sleep, I felt arms lift me: it was Anthea wrapping me in a blanket. This time, I didn’t instinctively recoil at the memory of the guards and the whip, but nor did I go back to sleep. I felt a vague sense of unease. I was distracted by the stars, which fascinated me. I gazed at them for ages, they seemed fixed, and yet they moved, so slowly that I couldn’t follow their path. Rose’s song still lingered in my ears.

After a while, I went to the toilet. On my way back, I noticed that some of the women were lying in twos, away from the group, entwined under the same blanket. I found that strange. When I had the opportunity to talk to Anthea about it, she shrugged and told me they gave each other what they could. I didn’t press the matter, because I could sense she was embarrassed.

We walked for twenty-six days, and every evening there was the sadness and then Rose’s singing. She never repeated the same song twice. At first, she sang tunes she’d learned before, then she began to make up songs, developing a talent she didn’t know she had. On the twenty-seventh day, when we stopped for lunch, I went on ahead as usual while the women prepared the food, and, for the first time, I spotted something. Halfway down the long slope we’d be heading down after the meal, stood a small, square building that looked so much like the cabin we’d left that at first I thought we must have gone round in a circle. But the lie of the land was different. This cabin wasn’t in the middle of the plain and it wasn’t facing south like ours, the gaping door was facing me. I raced forward and then realised that I ought to tell the others. So I went back, gesticulating madly, and they abandoned the fires and saucepans to come and join me. I forced myself to wait for them. I too had become a good companion.

They came running up, even Dorothy hurried, despite her shortness of breath. Anthea and I supported her all the way down the hill, and I was glad that this task helped me control my impatience. We stood around the half-open door for a moment, at a loss, terrified: what if there were guards? I stepped forward and pulled the door towards me. The hinges were already rusty and stiff. I pulled harder and they gave way, squeaking. I saw the staircase, the light was on. There was a nasty smell. I went in, with Anthea and Dorothy at my heels, and we started to make our way down. No one spoke, as if a premonition of what we were going to find was beginning to weigh on us.

The smell soon grew stronger and we weren’t even halfway down the stairs before it became overpowering. The bravest women were just behind us, and we could hear them exclaiming. Dorothy stopped, tore off the bottom of her dress and made a sort of mask which she held in front of her nose. We all did the same. It hardly lessened the smell but we felt protected from it. We continued our descent, breathing as little as possible, pausing to avoid getting out of breath. One by one, the women had fallen silent, and the only sound was the soft clatter of our feet on the stairs. We reached the bottom. The huge double wooden doors were open, as in our own prison the day the siren went off. I stepped inside and stopped dead, paralysed with horror.