‘You should learn to read,’ he said. ‘We need readers. My life depends on it.’

Lena felt that for the first time in her life she had found a way round her failings: something had turned out right for her. To express her surprise, she reached up and kissed Gustav on the cheek.

At school, Emma kept talking about her First Communion, which was due to take place at St Thomas’s. Lena asked Carina if she could go. She had been baptised after all, so it was only right. ‘And perhaps Herr Gustav could be my godfather.’ Carina was not interested, but Lena discovered the day and time of the service and presented herself at the church. The other girls had white dresses, as if they were brides, and the boys wore velvet suits and ties. The church was crowded with their parents and supporters.

Lena went to a pew at the back and watched what the other children did. When the time came to take the sacrament, she followed the others to the altar rail and knelt. Looking from the corner of her eye, she crossed her hands and held them out in front of her.

The body of Jesus was placed in her palm, which was damp with excitement. When she touched it with her lips, she felt a charge go through her spine. A second priest came with a silver cup, wiping the rim with a white napkin as he tilted it towards her. Lena had to restrain her hands from grasping, but managed to take in some of the sweet liquid with her lips. She closed her eyes.

She felt the hand of a priest on her head. ‘Bless you, child, you may return to your seat now. Go in peace.’ She opened her eyes and saw that she was the only one left at the rail. She made her way quickly back to her place.

In the days that followed she tried not to think too much about Stefan. He had seemed pleased to meet her when he held his hand up against hers on the boat and let the sun shine through; he had appeared to like her when he put his arm round her shoulder. Yet some twitch of self-preservation made her tell herself he wouldn’t come. He’d get the letter … but only when he returned from a long time away at sea. It would be too late. And he might not have enough money for the train.

And he probably had other children. In Ancona or Dubrovnik or one of those funny-sounding places he’d mentioned.

She’d never paused to think about this properly before, but now it seemed obvious: she was not his only child – much as she might have liked to be.

The letters that came through their door were most often from a workplace with a note of how much Carina had been paid, or from the school, to tell them when the new term began and that Lena’s work continued to be disappointing. Lena watched to see if the postman would climb to their front door, but he never did, hauling his heavy sack onwards to the wharf offices, then uphill to the parts of town where the houses sat behind high railings.