Sandor's voice ceased. The turning spools drew blank tapes through the machine. Sol thought of the moment in the screening room when Ruth prompted him for his memories. Three flickering children playing in a grainy river and their resonant ghosts: himself, the woman beside him and Jakob. A train whistle sounded its thin note further up the valley. He pulled himself out of the chilly water and the sun shone out of a cloudless sky, stinging his wet skin. Had he been hot or cold? But they were not children. They had never been three children playing in a river. Ruth was right, he thought, as the shadows lengthened, forming two figures on the rough ground where once he had lain. It was honesty, of a sort.