Camille Read Free Page A

her nightmare, Anne struggles to make sense of what is going on around her. As she looks up, the camera briefly captures an image of her face. It is heartrending.
    When he comes to this moment on the tape, Camille is so shocked he twice fumbles with the remote control before he manages to stop, rewind and pause: he does not recognise her. He can see nothing of Anne’s luminous features, her laughing eyes in this bruised, bloody face swollen already to twice its size, in these vacant eyes.
    Camille grips the edge of the table, he feels an overwhelming urge to weep because Anne is staring straight into the lens, gazing directly at him as though she might speak, might beg him to come to her rescue; he cannot help but imagine this, and imagination can be devastating. Imagine someone you love, someone who relies on you for protection, imagine watching them suffer, watching them die and feel yourself break out in a cold sweat. Now, go one step further and imagine in that moment of excruciating terror, this person crying out to you for help and you will wish you could die too. This is how Camille feels, staring at the video monitor, utterly helpless. There is nothing he can do save watch, because it is all over . . .
    It is unendurable, literally unendurable.
    He will watch this footage dozens of times.
    Anne behaves as though her surroundings do not exist. She would not react if the tall man were to stand over her and aim the barrel at the back of her head. It is a powerful survival instinct even if, watching it on the screen, it seems more like suicide: scarcely two metres away from a man with a shotgun who only minutes earlier made it clear that he was perfectly prepared to put a bullet in her head, Anne is about to do something that no-one in her position would wish to do. She is going to try to stand up. With no thought for the consequences. She is going to try to escape. Anne is a woman of great courage, but confronting a man with a sawn-off shotgun goes beyond bravery.
    What is about to happen arises almost automatically from the situation: two opposing forces are about to collide and one or other must prevail. Both forces are caught up in the moment. The difference being that one is backed up by a 12-bore shotgun, which unquestionably gives him the upper hand. But Anne cannot gauge the balance of power, cannot rationally calculate the odds against her, she is behaving as though she were alone. She musters every ounce of strength – and from the flickering images, it is clear she has little left – draws up her leg, hoists herself laboriously with her arms, her hands slipping in a pool of her own blood. She almost falls back, but tries a second time; the slowness of her movements lends the scene a surreal quality. She feels heavy, numb, you can almost hear her gasping for breath, you want to heave her up, to drag her away, to help her to her feet.
    Camille wants only to tell her not to move. Even if it takes a minute before the tall man turns and notices, Anne is so dazed, so out of it that she will not make it three metres before the first shotgun blast all but cuts her in two. But several hours have passed, Camille is staring at a video monitor, what he thinks now is of no importance: it is too late.
    Anne’s actions are not governed by thought but by sheer determination which knows no logic. It is obvious from the video that her resolution is simply a survival instinct. She does not look like someone being threatened by a shotgun at point-blank range, she looks like a woman who has had too much to drink and is about to pick up her handbag – Anne has clung to the bag from the beginning – stagger to the door and make her way home. It seems as though what is stopping her is not a 12-bore shotgun, but her befuddled state.
    What transpires next takes barely a second: Anne does not stop to think, she has struggled painfully to her feet. She manages to stay standing, her skirt is still hiked around her waist. She is