'Jacques, to es un ange, mais vraiment!' She reached up and he stooped to receive a kiss, tall, painfully thin, his stubbled face ravaged and his eyes deep in their shadowed sockets, his long mouth creased in the pleasure of the moment.

'Pour toi, n'importe quoi…' He straightened up, the clown's smile lingering as he dipped his head to me and walked away, one shoulder drooping.

Gabrielle took some of the small yellow boxes out of the bag, turning them over to read their printing in the dim light of the lamps. 'Fast film, 1,000 ASA — almost impossible to find in Phnom Penh…' She followed the leaning Don Quixote figure for a moment with her eyes. 'He has been here for twenty years, and has seen terrible things. He saw the Killing Fields.' She put the boxes back and pulled the drawstring tight at the neck of the bag.

'He's a photographer too?' I asked her.

With a quick, tight laugh — 'Jacques is many things, but yes, he takes brilliant pictures, frightening pictures.' The draught from the ceiling fans was fretting at the wicks of the small kerosene lamps, and shadows fluttered across her face. 'He goes sometimes into the jungle, for days on end.'

When the food arrived we stopped talking for a while and Gabrielle forgot my existence, eating only occasionally and without appetite, deep in her thoughts; in this light she looked as if she slept little, and not well. I took the chance to glance around the room; most of the people here were men, Cambodians; most of the rest were Chinese and Vietnamese, with only a few Westerners in plaid shirts and jeans or crumpled white tropical suits, one or two in khaki with shoulder flashes ripped away.

'C'etait bon?' I heard Gabrielle asking.

'Excellent. How was yours?'

'Pas mal.'

'Would Jacques liked to have joined us?' He was at the bar, his untidy head touching the fringe of the canopy.