‘Oh, you poor little thing,’ the woman said, squatting down in front of her. She really did look sorry. But even then, Zoë saw that she was already looking past her, at the next people who needed to tell their story, at whatever Mr Venizelos wanted her to do.

‘I saw her,’ Zoë whispered. She desperately wanted to put her arms around the woman, but she was so dirty and the woman’s dress was so starchy white. ‘Mama. In the water. I was sinking. She caught me.’

‘Oh. My.’

‘I … I want her to come back!’

‘Well now, Zoë, I’m just going to give you this.’ Zoë saw that what the woman was writing on was a label, the sort she had seen tied onto luggage when the big luxury liners came into Smyrna harbour. The woman, quick as a flash, tied the string of the label onto one of the points of Zoë’s sailor scarf, and, as she straightened up, planted a kiss on the top of Zoë’s head. ‘Good luck, honey,’ she whispered. And then she was gone.

Orphan. It is the same word in Greek, more or less. Orfanós. She had known. She had known, hadn’t she? As she had clung to the slippery timber, listening with all her might and hearing only her own frightened little breaths, she must have known.

She had never seen the American woman again. Since then, the official men and women had ignored her. She had been utterly alone in the great crowd that filled the waterfront of Piraeus. She couldn’t make sense of the big label that slapped her in the face every time the wind blew off the sea. The American woman who had wished her luck was nowhere to be found. Zoë kept moving through the crowds in an agony of panic, which buzzed through every inch of her, as if there were wasps in her veins instead of blood. The waterfront was an ocean of faces, and every face had been made frightening by grief or rage or despair. She made herself look into every one of them, though, in case … but she knew. Why would Mama and Papa be here? They would be somewhere cool and nice, waiting for her. But I’m looking for them, she told herself over and over again. If I keep searching, I’ll find them. If I stop …