In her mind a huge battle has begun, an enormous fight of two opposing forces. Consciously, she flutters away from it again, she stands up and walks away from the café and goes back to the others. They swim again before lunch; she wants to fold into the water and be lost in it. They have a delicious lunch of perch, on the lakeside terrace; ice cream with real plums in it. Rosa is in such a good mood, she is happy to play on the swings in the little park in the afternoon and Mother agrees to watch her in the evening when Archie asks Laura if she will come dancing at a neighbouring hotel.
All the physical pleasures are a welcome distraction; she throws herself into them, and even, yes, after the dancing, she goes up to Archie’s room and tries to lose herself in sexual pleasure again. But it is elusive to her. What is she doing, rubbing herself against this man? He knows nothing of her; her mind is a blank to him. He is holding a naked woman in his arms, he does not care who she is, and this makes her self-conscious – if he does not care for her, for her personality, for all she has given and all she has lost, then is it just her small breasts, the slope of her stomach, he wants? Again she is thrown back through the years, to the time when she believed erotic joy meant perfect communion. She remembers how she felt entirely taken over by Edward and his ability to rouse passion in her. And now … now she sees sex the way others have always seen it. They could be any woman, any man lying there. There is nothing unique, nothing irreplaceable, in this. She cannot find her pleasure tonight, but she lets him have his. He says how wonderful it was, how lovely she is. She realises that he does not know that she was not there for him. She rolls away from him, burying her head in the pillow, and he puts out a hand and strokes her back.
And so the holiday goes on. It is all as it should be, Laura realises; everyone is so well mannered, everything is so pleasurable. Even when an electric storm comes over on their last day, they go into Annecy to shop and lunch in the driving rain and manage to enjoy the afternoon. When they part, and Mother and Rosa and Laura get back on the train to Geneva, they are all agreed: it was such a good break. They must do it again soon.
The next day she wakes early. It is Monday. Over breakfast, she tells her mother that she can’t go to the doctor with her that day, even though Mother would like her to help her talk to him about the pains she has been having in her legs. She makes up a pointless excuse instead about the new job and needing to go and talk to Winifred. She feels selfish as she says it, but she has to do this now. She drives back up the road to St-Cergue. It is a good choice of theirs, she thinks as she drives. You can see forever, and be sure there is nobody following. She parks the car a little below where they had stopped before, and finds the footpath into the woods. She goes some way down it, holding the camera, and after a while she lifts it up to her eyes. You cannot see the lake clearly here, but there is a glimpse through the trees, a sliver of blue, misty in the distance. She frames the view until she hears footsteps behind her, and turns around.
‘Stefan.’
After all this time. Older, more tired, than ever – he seems to be walking with a limp. If she has been through a lot, what must he have been through? He nods at her, and they walk together. Then he puts his coat on the ground and they sit down. There are wild strawberries there in the grass, below the trees. Laura picks one; it is just a few seeds, a little sweetness, in her mouth.
‘Will you come?’
‘It’s my choice?’
‘You will do it,’ Stefan says. ‘You believe in the revolution.’ Laura does not know whether that is a question or a statement, but she knows those are not the words she would use.
‘Tell me all about Edward – what does he say, how is he?’
‘I haven’t seen him. But I know he wants us to bring you over. He wants to see his daughter.’
There are so many questions that Laura could ask: about what Edward has said about Rosa, what his life is like, is he working, where is he living, does he feel at home there? Is he drinking? Is he with Nick? But it is hard to get your tongue around questions when you are so used to silence, so Laura just asks why it has been so long. Stefan talks about an agent intercepted at the borders, about difficulty in getting clearance in Moscow for certain activities, about a letter that was destroyed when another agent lost his courage. Laura cannot sift truth from lies. She gets up and tells Stefan that she doesn’t know yet, that she wants him to come back tomorrow, same time, same place. It is the first time that she has ever given instructions to him, but he accepts them.