To his horror the girl starts to cry again. Not just blubbing, though: her body looks like it is being bent and unbent by something he can’t see, and the air is going in and out of her mouth in great ragged gasps. ‘Oh, gosh, don’t,’ he says, helplessly.

‘It was smoky and dirty,’ she gasps. ‘The fire. All the people were burning up in it. But Papa was taking us to Athens and we were going to have ice cream … And now he’s gone! Mama’s gone!’

‘Maybe they’ve just gone to see the ice cream man,’ Tom decides. In a hot, smelly place like this, there’s bound to be someone selling ice cream.

‘I fell in the sea,’ the girl says, shaking her head. Her face is in her hands again. Her shoulders quiver. Please don’t blub, Tom pleads, silently. He has been brought up, for the six years of his life, to be a grown-up in miniature, a little sahib, a little Englishman. But Tom has come to the limit of this false adulthood. Squatting in his shorts, socks and sandals, trapped between a forest of legs and the oily sea, he feels very small and scared. He wants his mummy. She would know what to do. What would Mummy do?

‘It was so cold,’ the girl is saying. ‘And I was all alone. I don’t know what happened to Thetis.’ She glances at him through her fingers. ‘Maybe they swam away? But that man said they had … had …’ She starts to sob harder.

‘Crikey,’ says Tom. This news seems far too big to be coming from this little girl. ‘I think … My mummy and daddy will know what to do. My daddy was in the army and Mummy’s good at everything.’ To his surprise, he finds that he has reached out and taken the girl’s hand in his own. It is rather sticky and very hot. ‘Don’t worry, Zo … Zo …’

‘Zoë.’ She sniffs, and grips his hand tightly.

‘Zo-ee. I liked your song.’

‘Papa … Papa says I oughtn’t to sing songs like that, from the cafes. But Papa is … is …’ She doubles over and lets out a terrible wail.

Tom doesn’t know what to do. It is as if everything his father has ever said about foreigners, and women for that matter, is here before him, wearing a dirty sailor suit. He doesn’t understand most of those things but he does understand that, like most things except horses, they trouble Daddy and make him angry. Zoë doesn’t make Tom angry, though. She is making him feel sad and upset, but her hand in his … Tom isn’t alone. He is quite lost in an ocean of strangers, but he has someone else. ‘Are you going to sing again?’ he asks.

The girl wipes her nose with the back of her hand and shakes her head. ‘I can’t.’