“Okay, if you think so. Mum would probably beg to differ. Her name’s Marie-France. She’s a photographer and you slept with each other once, but then something happened. You didn’t stay together. I don’t think you were even there for my birth. She told me shortly before I started school that Steve wasn’t my real father. He’s not too bad, though. He’s a floor layer and works in a DIY superstore. Anyway, I’m going to read to you now, if you agree.”

I open the book and begin to read aloud.

DAY THIRTY

Henri

I fall until I hit the ground. It’s hard and cold. The candles have burned down and gone out.

Marie-France has pushed me off the camp bed we were sharing. I was cradling her naked body in my arms, and turning over in her sleep she pushed me out.

Images of the attack are still swirling around my head, and my heart is pumping. A war correspondent’s mind is a machine that’s always overheating and needing to be patched up.

I gaze at Marie-France. It wasn’t mutual seduction—we simply devoured each other in our hunger for life. I ought to go and see the company doctor Greg’s always talking about. So far I’ve refused to do so, but I barely ever sleep through the night now. During the daytime I’m assaulted by recollections so blurred and vague that I can identify them neither as elements from the past nor as illusions. It’s as if, when I doze off, I hover just below the threshold of waking, losing my way in a half-light of thoughts and images.

Marie-France doesn’t look me in the eye later as I hand her a metal cup of steaming coffee.

We fly to Wau and from there back to Paris via Cairo. Marie-France nods off against my shoulder as we cruise over the Mediterranean. She’s embarrassed when she wakes up and huddles against the misted-up window for the rest of the journey.

As we’re standing facing each other at Charles de Gaulle Airport I ask her, “Do you want to see me again?”

She shrugs her shoulders. They’re narrow and delicate, but they can bear a good deal—apart, perhaps, from the knowledge that I’ve seen into her soul.

“Not necessary,” Marie-France drawls.

When I say nothing she adds, with deliberate nonchalance, “Okay then,” and bends down to pick up her green camera bag.

Air-kiss left, air-kiss right. One last quick, searching look from her dark eyes. There’s a glimpse of wounded vanity there because I don’t insist on staying, but I can also catch a hint of surprise that she isn’t urging me to stay.

Go? Or stay?