Page 177 of Babel

Then, always, the strange, tentative imagining of what a ceasefire might look like. Should they write up a contract with terms of amnesty? Yusuf took charge of this, drafting a treaty that saved them from the gallows. When the tower resumed normal functioning, would they be a part of it? What did scholarship look like in the age after empire, when they knew Britain’s silver stores would dwindle into nothing? They had never considered these questions before, but now, when the outcome of this strike stood on a razor’s edge, their only comfort was in prognosticating the future in such detail that it seemed possible.

But Robin couldn’t bring himself to try. He couldn’t bear those conversations; he excused himself whenever they occurred.

There was no future without Ramy, without Griffin, without Anthony and Cathy and Ilse and Vimal. As far as he was concerned, time had stopped when Letty’s bullet had left the chamber. All there was now was the fallout. What happened after was for someone else to struggle through. Robin only wanted it all to end.

Victoire found him on the rooftop, hugging his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth to the sound of gunfire. She sat down beside him. ‘Bored with legal terminology?’

‘It feels like a game,’ he said. ‘It feels ludicrous – and I know this, all of this, was ludicrous to begin with, but that – talking about after – just feels like an exercise in fantasy.’

‘You have to believe there’s an after,’ she murmured. ‘They did.’

‘They were better than us.’

‘They were.’ She curled around his arm. ‘But it all still wound up in our hands, didn’t it?’