Tommy doesn’t want to get out of the boat. He looks over the side at the water, glinting with rainbow swirls of oil. Further down, a cloud of tiny silver fish moves back and forth. It must be silent down there. The roar of voices coming from the refugees is frightening. He hangs back, but Mummy still has a firm grip on his hand and before he knows it he is half climbing, half being hauled up onto the quayside. The major is standing, jaw set, pointing to where a line of horse-drawn carriages are waiting in the shade of some palm trees.

‘Over there, Mrs Collyer. Those are cabs, I think.’

Mummy follows the major across the wide expanse of pavement and tram rails, Mummy pulling Tommy, who shuffles along unwillingly, as only he seems to have noticed what is streaming towards them along the quay: a straggling column of people, mostly women and children with a few old men, being herded by a few soldiers in dusty uniforms and one single nurse in a blindingly white uniform. Tommy has time to note her starched wimple with its red cross in the centre and her steel-rimmed spectacles before the column reaches them and they are swamped. Instantly, Tommy is caught by the dragging black skirts of two women walking almost shoulder to shoulder. He trips, and feels his fingers being dragged out of his mother’s grasp. Squeezed between hips and thighs, he staggers in this new direction, terrified in case he falls and is trampled. He looks up and sees red faces framed by black headscarves, dirty hands gripping a baby, a bundle of rags. He catches his breath, and the air is full of sweat, mustiness, onions and, very faint, cinnamon. And words, incomprehensible, soft and hard at the same time, nothing like Malayalam or Hindi or English, the only languages he has ever heard. He trips, catches hold of rough cloth, rights himself. Someone treads, hard, on one of his sandal-clad feet. The women lurch to one side and come to a sudden, complaining halt. Tommy claws his way out from inside the quivering forest of skirts and legs and looks around, frantically, for his mother, but all he sees are dark, dusty people towering around him. To his horror, he finds he is behind the wooden barricade. There, looming not very far away in the harbour, is the huge bulk of the Narkunda. But here … He whimpers and thumbs hot tears from his eyes.