No, she said. Those men weren’t the police.

Were they safe here?

No, she said, she didn’t think they were. He should come with her to the boat. He could swim, couldn’t he?

Yes, he said, he could swim.

Well then, she said. But she could not persuade him to leave the cover of the woods, no matter what she said.

A pair of shots. A pause. Another pair of shots.

He was clinging to her very tightly. He was hurting her. She was injured, she explained. She couldn’t stay here. She needed him to loosen his grip.

“Sorry,” he said in English. So sorry. He hadn’t meant to hurt her.

You didn’t, she told him, though the pain was more than she had ever known. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, clutched at her thighs with her nails. The boy was looking at her hands. She could hear his breathing, and her own, ragged and hoarse. She knew she was frightening him. But more than that, she knew she must not cry out.

When the pain subsided she asked him to take her pack, to unzip it and take out the metal box, and to place the box under a long piece of rotting pine bark on the forest floor. The boy did what she asked, wordlessly. His face was streaked with dirt and tears. In the forest gloom the blood from her wound was black on his white T-shirt.

When she told him it was okay, that he would be okay, she saw how hard he tried to smile and it almost broke her. You’re being very brave, she told him.

“I don’t want to die.”

What’s your name? she asked him.

“Arno.”

“Then we have to go, Arno,” she said.

He nodded. She promised him he would not die. But he would not leave, and she knew she could not stay.

She kept to the trees on the left side of the path, by the lake. It was heavy going through the underbrush. She had imagined she would slip past the dormitory cabins in the cover of the trees, but as she drew near, panting—her body twisted in anticipation of the pain that increased with every step—she realized that it would not be simple. The cabins were arranged in four straight rows on the other side of the path. Anyone standing outside could see directly on to the path. Worse, the trees on the lake side had been cut away opposite the cabins to give a view on to the water.

Why hadn’t she called someone? Her father? The police? Too late for that now; she would give herself away.

She came to the edge of the woods. Between her and the lake the cabins were small, square, and cheaply built, with miniature terraces and mean little windows.

She began to walk towards the lake. She passed the first row of cabins.