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and the sound of rain.
    â€˜What am I doing here?’
    He was crying, ignominious and naked, waving his useless hands to and fro, as if he thought this would take the burning away.
    â€˜What am I doing?’
    Etta came to him and stood there in front of him. Then she undid her robe and he stepped closer and she folded him in. She said nothing, just held him and he held her with the weight of his wrists against her shoulders and his bandaged palms out a fraction from her body. They stood like that for a long time.

T HREE
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    H e began to shiver so she put him into bed and covered him up, his bandaged hands out flat on his chest. She went to the bathroom and when she came back some minutes later he was asleep, mouth open, looking old and vulnerable. She lay down beside him and watched him sleep, then slept herself, then woke and in the warmth of the bed and his body next to hers, she kissed him. The bedside light was still on, and she saw his eyes open as her lips came down on his. He reached for her, but she laughed softly and pushed his hand away and said, ‘Let me.’
    She came down astride him and held his hands back against the pillows so he would not be tempted to help. As she made love to him, there was guileless candour in his eyes. It astonished them both that this was possible, after what had happened to him, and as the known yet unquenchable pleasure rose within her, Etta felt that the rain-bounded night was lifting and that the room’s confines had suddenly opened out on to a future together. She knew a lot about hope, and she knew how to keep it under control, but just then it was seductive.
    When Charlie woke a few hours later she was sitting in the chair on the other side of the room, holding a cup of tea and looking out the window. He lay watching her. The scent of her body was on his skin and in the sheets. With men, like with Jacek, you could tell what they were thinking. But with women, you never knew. He was thinking – where the hell do we go from here? – but right away, he knew that she was not. She came over, sat on the edge of the bed, gave him some of her tea and when he seemed fully awake, Etta said, ‘How did you leave her?’
    On a slab in the surgical tent, exposed, alone, de nuded. Then rolled off the slab into a body bag and then … Jesus. He reached for the phone but she got there first and dialled the hospital and held the phone to his ear while he sat up in bed.
    The male duty nurse on the 6th Navy hospital switchboard told Charlie that the female civilian, not having any next of kin, had been incinerated. He corrected himself, had been cremated. And the ashes? Charlie wanted to know. These were operational details. Charlie replied that they weren’t goddamned operational details. The woman was … and here he faltered, choosing between alternatives, none of which were satisfactory – she is my kin, she is my friend and so on –, settling on ‘I was with her when she died’, which hadn’t been true either. The duty nurse said he under stood, sir, and he was sorry, but there was nothing he could do about it, because the ashes had already been disposed of. Charlie began shouting that this wasn’t the fucking point, the fucking point was – at which Etta put the phone down.
    Charlie was striding around the hotel room, shouting that they hadn’t even kept her ashes or effects, such as they were: a carbonised dress, one shoe, possibly an earring or a ring, though he couldn’t remember whether she had been wearing any jewellery. Etta said she doubted there would have been any, but Charlie didn’t seem to be listening. Whatever there had once been, it was all