Across the Mediterranean from Morocco and Algeria into Portugal and Spain. From Tunisia and Libya into Sicily and the islands of southern Italy. And from all points east – Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan – into Turkey and Greece then across the Balkans and the dream of life in northern Europe.

I checked my notes on the thirteen passports we had found in the cab. Three Syrian. Two Turkish. And one each from Nigeria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, China, Somalia and Serbia – Hana Novak.

There was no doubt in my mind that the lorry had taken the Balkans route.

We knew that the truck had entered the country at Dover on a ferry from Dunkirk. I worked my way backwards through what Europol called the major smuggling hubs.

Dover. Dunkirk. Paris. Stuttgart. Munich. Zagreb.

And Belgrade.

Had Hana been the last passenger to join the lorry? It seemed likely. My finger traced the likely route before they picked up Hana. Skopje in Macedonia. Athens in Greece. And then one of the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea – Kos or Lesbos or Symi, a short hop from the Swiss cheese coastline of Turkey. And before that, all they were fleeing from – a world of war, suffering and poverty.

And I read about the casualties.

The unknown thousands who drowned unnoticed, uncounted and unmourned in the seas of Europe. The fifty-eight Chinese who were found dead in a Dutch lorry at Dover in 2000, the largest mass killing in British criminal history. And the twelve young women who had died in London this morning.

I remembered Hana Novak, and the few hours of her life that she had spent at the end of the rainbow, and how she had looked in her hospital bed at the Royal Free.

And I thought about the thirteenth passport.

And as my eyes fell shut and my head nodded forward, and I folded my hands to rest just for a moment, I tried to imagine where the woman who got away was sleeping tonight.

I jolted awake in the crystal light of another freezing dawn. My daughter and my dog were by my side, both watching me with disapproval. Scout was still in her pyjamas and holding a purple toothbrush, clearly realising that I had not made it to bed when she was cleaning her teeth.

‘Scout,’ I said, still blurry. ‘Can I get you some breakfast?’

She nodded briskly.

‘Don’t stay up all night,’ she said. ‘It’s bad for you. OK?’

‘OK.’

She turned away. Stan trotting beside her, gazing up with adoration.

‘And I’m having pancakes,’ she called over her shoulder, as if our breakfast menu had been decided a long time ago.

5

Scout and I sat at a window seat at Smiths of Smithfield, eating our breakfast – a stack of pancakes for her and porridge with honey and berries for me. We were watching the cars go by.