‘And you – did you get sick?’

‘Oh yes, like everyone – dysentery. Some typhus. But I was strong. And by the time we were moving on to Iran, I was in a separate place – with the army. My baby sister, Dorota, she got a bad fever and she died on the way. Agnieska and Ewa, they sat and held her, their dead sister, while our mother went to try and find a way to bury her. But how could she? She had no tool, no . . .’

‘Shovel?’

‘Yes, shovel – she had nothing. So they had to put her in a grave with others – many others together.’ He continued quickly. ‘Somehow, along the way, Ewa became separated from the others. I think because she was so sick. Agnieska says she cannot remember the time – she had a fever also. So Agnieska is left with my mother, and they all cross the Caspian Sea to Iran, to be put in a camp on the beach. The journey is very difficult: the heat is terrible. When they reach the place – it is Pahlavi, the name, I think – my mother is so weak, so sick. Many are sick, and their bones sticking out. After three days she opened her eyes for the last time. I think her heart is broken as well as her strength.’

‘So poor Agnieska was left all on her own?’

‘Yes. No one else of my family. There was no sight of Ewa. But others looked after her. After some time everyone was sent out to other camps – she was first in India some years, then East Africa: Uganda. She speaks Swahili language, you know! Then from there they come here.’

‘And what about Ewa?’

‘We don’t know. Still we are trying to find out. But I do not have a big hope.’

Katie was struggling to take all this in. ‘And you: where were you, Marek?’

‘They took us first to Palestine for training. The Jewish boys thought their dreams had come true. They didn’t want to leave, and they stayed to fight there. Then we went to Italy, all the way up to Monte Cassino. We get our hands on the Germans! Along the way I met Piotr and together we go on. Then – here. Here I am.’

‘Oh, Marek . . .’ She looked into his face. She felt powerfully tender towards him, but what he had told her was so terrible, so immense. She didn’t know how he could bear the grief of it all. All she could do was hold him, kissing his face.

After a long silence she said, ‘All your family. You’ve lost so much.’

‘It was the same for everybody,’ he said. By his detached way of talking she understood that he could not go into the emotions – it would be too much. ‘Talk to any of the Poles – it is the same.’

‘Piotr?’

‘Yes. All dead. In Siberia.’