“We were there for a conference and we had a night free and the film was in English so it seemed like a good idea.” She stopped as though she were short of breath and then continued: “Some parts of the film were exaggerated, but others were not. Others were exactly like it was. Neither Donald nor I ever saw any bodies, we had to stay in the building day and night, but after a few days we knew where the bodies were, and the film made me sick because it brought it all back again; things I hadn’t dared think about. Richard, I saw things in the film that I had only imagined before, but I knew them when I saw them, they were real and they happened. Donald and I have never talked about it. We walked from the cinema to our hotel next door that night; he had a drink at the bar and then I went to bed. We said nothing to each other about it. We could not help each other.”

“What did you do when you were in the building in Santiago?” I asked. She lit another cigarette and lay back. Again, she said nothing for a while.

“We had orders not to leave the building. We were told to stock up on food and be prepared to stay the night. There were about six telephone lines and our job was to man the lines, to keep them free at all times if we could. Everyone involved had our number: we passed on messages, that was what we did most of the time. But then the numbers were passed on to other people-I mean that somehow local people got the number—and people rang us if they needed to know where their son or their daughter or their friend was. Donald spoke better Spanish than I did, so he took most of the calls, but some of them spoke English too and they were all desperate, they were desperate, they were sure that if they gave us the name and the last time the person was seen we could give them information about the person’s whereabouts. We wrote down the names and all the details, but there was nothing we could do, and then they would ring back, every time more desperate. We would try and get them off the phone because our instructions were to keep the lines clear and they would implore us to help them. Most of the time there were just the two of us, two American kids, and the telephone ringing all day and all night. I told my parents about it several years ago, but I have never told anybody else.”

“Maybe we should sleep for a while,” I said. I wanted to be away from her. I wanted to get out of the bed and dress myself and leave, but I knew that I could not do that.