‘I know. It’s amazing, isn’t it?’

‘I can’t help wondering—’ He broke off and shook his head. ‘No. We’re not going to talk about this tonight. You need a break from it – from all of it. That was the whole point of you coming here.’ He sighed then, and became fractious. ‘Rachel, there’s something I should tell you. Something I probably should have mentioned before I invited you to stay the night.’

She sat up straighter. ‘Okay…’

He looked uncomfortable, turning the glass in his hands, not looking at her. ‘I suffer from night terrors.’

Rachel blinked. This wasn’t the sort of confession she had been expecting. ‘Night terrors?’

‘I call them night terrors because they’re not just nightmares. I stayed with Sylvie when I first got out of the hospital after my injury, and I used to wake her up. I… I should have said something sooner, I’m sorry. I’ve become so used to it, it didn’t occur to me.’

Rachel frowned. ‘Do you have them every night?’

He looked away. ‘I think so. Yes, I do.’

Rachel leaned over to put her wine glass down on the coffee table. ‘Have you talked to anyone about it?’

Toby looked back at her. ‘A counsellor, you mean? I did, for a while. But it didn’t seem to help, and then I came here.’ He shifted slightly. ‘I didn’t want to put my life on hold. I didn’t… want to give in to it. The things I’m dreaming about – it’s not the day I got my injury. What I see when I sleep comes from years of experiences, years. I can’t work through it all, I can’t. I’ll just deal with it.’

Rachel thought that this was not the best way to deal with what seemed to be an acute problem with PTSD. Still, she wasn’t a psychiatrist, and she had no place telling him what to do.

‘If you wake me up,’ she said, ‘then I’ll go back to sleep. It’s not a problem.’

He looked at her doubtfully.

‘Really,’ she said. She picked up her wine glass again, purely to have something to do. ‘I’m no stranger to nightmares. Although it’s been a few years since I had anything really bad.’

Toby said nothing, but when she looked up he was watching her, and gave a smile when she met his eye.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘What for?’

He shrugged. ‘For sharing that. Journalists don’t… it’s not something any of my peers have ever admitted. It makes me feel… weak, I suppose. Even weaker than I already do after this.’ He tapped his bad leg with his free hand.

‘It’s not weakness,’ she told him. ‘It’s your brain trying to process trauma.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it tends to “process” more on nights when something unusual has happened during the day. I’ve got a feeling the camera obscura will qualify. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ Rachel said.

He smiled, but was looking into his glass. ‘Thank you,’ he said again.