‘We’re not very resourceful, are we!’ said Greta ruefully.

‘We come from a world where it wasn’t necessary, everything was ready-made and we never asked how things were produced,’ replied Frances.

They didn’t like talking about the past any more than they had done before, and would have said nothing further, but it was a long hike and this was a good opportunity. Because Anthea had taught me a lot of things, I felt bolder about asking questions.

‘Tell me what it was like,’ I said. ‘How did you live?’

Initially, they were reluctant to answer, then they relented. At first, they were talking to me, but it turned out they’d never told one another their life stories, and they were enjoying this opportunity. Frances had been married with two children, Paul and Mary. When the disaster struck, she’d been planning to have a third, and, because her memories were so terribly hazy, she didn’t know whether she’d been pregnant and lost the baby or had simply intended to have another child. Her husband was called Lawrence, and she’d met him when she was twenty three, on the rebound from a love affair which she thought she’d never get over. As she talked, she kept saying:

‘But it’s all so ordinary, it’s the same as everybody else!’

As if she wasn’t aware that for me, nothing was ordinary, since nothing had ever happened to me.

‘The child’s right, nothing’s ordinary when it’s happening to you,’ said Denise. ‘I didn’t have any children, but I wanted them and I always envied those who did.’

When all their lives had been shattered, she was on her second divorce, because, she said, she always chose the wrong men and was never happy with them. Greta couldn’t understand why Denise kept remarrying. She herself had never married, but had lived for years with the same lover and been very happy. That shocked Denise. And they began arguing about whether marriage was a good thing or not. In that wilderness where there were no men to marry, they debated whether it was better to be unfaithful or to leave, and then they burst out laughing. Even I recognised the absurdity of the situation and laughed with them. On reflection, I realise that I laughed a lot more often than I thought. But later, they cried, and I wasn’t able to understand them any more. Then they felt sorry for me, because I’d never experience love, and it was the same as when they talked about chocolate or the joys of a long, hot bath; I believed them without really being able to imagine what they were talking about.

Greta had had a son by this man she’d never married, but apart from naming them, none of them would ever talk about their children. On that subject, my questions were unable to break through their defences. Later, Anthea tried to explain their reticence to me.

‘You can’t understand, and since I didn’t have any children myself, I probably don’t fully understand either, but just think about what might have happened to their children! Growing up alone, like you, among strangers who weren’t in a position to take proper care of them? Or killed? Or dumped in groups of forty in bunkers, living like animals, dying for want of attention? They don’t want to think about their children. They’re probably all dead, and better off that way. If Frances was pregnant, she must have had a miscarriage. You’ve never seen a child, you don’t know what it means—their vulnerability, their trust, the love you feel for them, the anxiety, being ready to lay down your life to save them, and it’s unbearable to imagine a child’s pain.’