‘I want to hear them.’

I began to laugh, as much to my surprise as to anyone else’s. I’d been used to respecting the women’s wishes, especially those of the eldest who had the most authority, but everything had changed because I could no longer see any basis for that authority. I suddenly discovered that they had no power. We were all locked up in the same manner, without knowing why, watched over by jailers who, either out of contempt or because they were obeying orders, didn’t speak to any of us. They never entered the cage. They were always in threes, except when they changed shift, and then we saw six at a time, but they didn’t speak to one another. At mealtimes, one of the big double doors would open, a man would push a trolley along the gap between the cage and the wall, and another unlocked a little hatch through which he passed us the food. They wouldn’t answer our questions and we had long since stopped asking them any. The old women were as helpless as the younger ones. They had seized some imaginary power, a power over nothing, a tacit agreement that created a meaningless hierarchy, because there were no privileges that they could grant or refuse. The fact is that we were on an absolutely equal footing.

I sat still for a few seconds, registering those familiar facts that suddenly became stunning revelations, and looking Dorothy squarely in the eyes.

‘You want to hear my secrets,’ I said, ‘but all you can do is inform me of your wishes.’

I noted with interest the effect my words had on her: at first, when she saw that I was about to answer, she looked smug, she must have thought she’d won my obedience. Then she listened, and grasped the meaning of what I was saying, but she was so taken aback that she thought she hadn’t understood.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just think about it,’ I said. ‘I mean exactly what I said.’

‘You haven’t said anything!’

‘I said I wouldn’t tell you my secrets. You told me you wanted them. That’s not telling me anything new, I was already aware of that. You think you only have to tell me you want to know for me to tell you.’

That was indeed what she thought.

‘That is how things should be,’ she insisted.

‘Why?’

She was disconcerted. I saw she wasn’t thinking about my question, she was so shocked that I could have asked it. She’d inherited a tradition to which I did not belong: when an older woman asks a younger woman to reply, the younger one does so. She’d never questioned that, but I, who had grown up in the bunker, had no reason to comply. After a few moments:

‘What do you mean, “why”?’

‘Why should I answer? Why do you think it goes without saying?’

Her gaze faltered. She tried to think, but she wasn’t used to doing so. She looked confused and clutched at the first idea that came to her: