He paused again, and Rachel found herself reaching out a hand to place it over his where it rested on the bench. Toby turned his hand over and tangled his fingers with hers.

‘He was still alive when I got to him. I got him into the flatbed and drove the truck back to the city myself, but he was dead by the time I got to the hospital. Not that the hospital would have had much in the way of supplies to treat him anyway.’

Toby cleared his throat.

‘I completed the assignment. I had to, that was my job, it was why I was there, but I didn’t write about that day. I took that roll of film back home with me. I should have left it there, in the dust, but I didn’t. I had it developed. And the thing is, those photographs of the van… they’re beautiful. I love them. I still find them beautiful, even now. That photograph is of something destroyed, defaced by weapons that must also have ended human lives, taken moments before another life was destroyed, because of me. There’s at least a possibility that some of the bullets that damaged that van were fired from the same gun that killed my driver. But it’s still beautiful, and I don’t – I could never—’

Rachel squeezed his hand, a reminder that she was there.

‘I know there’s a message there, somewhere,’ Toby said. ‘One I’ve never been able to decode. I don’t know if it’s about myself or about humanity at large, or whether there should have been something much more specific about that particular war that I should have been able to extrapolate from that image.’ He shook his head. ‘That was my first big assignment, and it was my biggest failure. The rest of my career came out of trying to make up for what happened to Soumanwolo, and every time I published, I was reminded of him. And when I got shot myself—’ He stopped again, shaking his head. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever spoken about that. To anyone.’

‘Well,’ Rachel squeezed his hand. ‘I think I understand your night terrors a lot more now.’

Toby smiled grimly. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you think,’ she suggested gently, ‘that if you talked to someone about this incident – professionally, I mean – they might be able to help?’

He lifted her hand to rest it on his thigh between both of his. It was an intimate touch, but Toby was looking out at the water and she wasn’t sure he’d even realized he’d moved. Then he looked down at their joined hands and let her go.

‘They might,’ he said. ‘But perhaps I don’t feel as if they should. I don’t think my guilt is illegitimate, do you? And so perhaps I should feel it. Perhaps I deserve to.’

Twenty-Eight

It all came to a head one rainy afternoon when the shop was empty of anyone except people Gilly knew. She was trying to answer an email from someone asking about a specific book for which they’d been searching. Edie appeared through the doors and leaned against the counter, brandishing something that Gilly saw, at a glance, was a college prospectus.