Her memories went something like this:
The feeling she would never be cold again. Which brought a kind of joy at first. Until Kitty brushed against her, and was horrified, and took her temperature and sent her to bed. Except there was no bed, because they were on the move again already. She was lying in an ambulance, and that was all wrong, wasn’t it? And the sides felt so thin, and it was dark, so dark, and she didn’t know where she was, but there seemed to be someone above her, and blood was dripping down onto her face, drop after drop. And everything was so loud, and shaking. Where was Dolores?
A train, and a tunnel. Trying to make herself invisible, trying not to cough. More dripping. Dissolving snow, and water running down smoke-blackened brickwork. A hundred pairs of labouring lungs, trying to breathe silently. It’s too dark to see. The important thing is not to draw attention to oneself. She must get back to her hospital, back to her patients. But she doesn’t know where they are. Still, she has her salvoconducto, safe in her hand. She has not lost her pass. Everything else has gone, but not her pass.
Nat has a gun. He is going to shoot me.
There is a truck, and planes, and a dead baby, silent in a shawl. Stories she has heard from others confuse her. Bombs disguised as chocolate boxes. A petrol station, exploding next to a café. Bodies in the air. A cliff and a limestone gorge. Blindfolds and rifles. Bodies falling through space. Was she there, or not?
The taste of betrayal.
Es la guerra. Mañana mas. That’s war for you. More tomorrow.
There was always more. A train rattles through the night and through the day. It comes to a halt on the outskirts of a small town and Felix gathers the strength to raise herself onto one elbow. Through the gap between papers plastered over glass, she sees a fair-haired young man sitting in the shade of a truck, surrounded by children. It’s George and he’s showing them his binoculars, and how to use them. In their efforts to see, they cover one eye and then the other, and laugh as the images shrink and grow, blur and sharpen. With his help, the boys and girls keep turning the heavy field glasses round, peering at each other through different ends, waving delightedly. What is George doing? Oh . . . Felix realises. He’s distracting the children from the work in the cemetery behind, where they are digging more graves. She knocks on the window. She must tell him where she is. He needs to know she is alive. She needs him to know. He is so kind. But he can’t hear her – he is concentrating on the children – and the train is moving again.
Eventually, a proper hospital. Hot springs. Cold sponging. Lucidity and pain. No food. Peach blossom and bare earth. And finally another convoy. The last surprise is a whitewashed room. Through the shutters just above her head, a glint of light. Felix pulls herself up towards it, hanging onto the sill, heart slowly beating. And when she opens the shutters she is nearly blinded. The sea, the sparkling sea: from the mountains, they have come right across to the sea again. It is beautiful.