Shaking, she dropped onto a coil of rope and, drawing her knees up to her chin and hugging them to her, she sat, rocking and moaning, staring down at the oily water between the moored boats, at the shoals of slender, silver fish that twisted and coiled through the rusty mooring chains and ribbons of weed. Had there been fish, when she’d been down there? The sea was full of fish. Why hadn’t she seen fish? A thread of breeze caught the label tied to her scarf and flapped it into her face. She batted it away, and that made her remember the American woman and the man who had looked like Venizelos. She had wanted to ask him something, but she hadn’t quite known what that was. But now she did. Are my mama and papa dead? He had looked at his papers and told the woman to write the label. They’re dead, aren’t they? The bodies in front of the church had frightened her so much that she had pushed them out of her head but now they came back, but this time laid out at the bottom of the sea. She fought, then, not to see but there they were: Mama and Papa, lying peacefully on clean white sand, Papa in his sailing jacket, Mama in her hat, smiling up at the beautiful fish.

She didn’t even realise that she was singing until she felt a shadow slip across her skin. She looked up to find a gaunt woman standing over her. The woman’s eyes were outlined with smudged kohl and her reddish hair was tied up in a grubby, once-bright silk scarf. She smiled down at Zoë.

‘Where did you learn how to sing, my golden one?’

‘What … ?’ Zoë squinted into the sunlight. The woman had a wide mouth. Her skin was stretched tightly over her cheekbones and her eyes were sunken. Zoë thought of various witches and vampires in the stories that Cook had told her. But the woman didn’t look much like a vampire. Too tired to be evil. And did vampires call you golden one?

‘My papa takes me to the Cafe Trieste on Rue Medjidi …’ The words felt so nice to say. ‘He always buys me a cream cake. I like to listen to the music.’

‘I bet you come from Bournabat. Yes? Or Cordelio?’

‘My house is in Bournabat. I live at number 32 in the Street of the English Church,’ she said.

‘So, little doll. Where’s Papa now?’ the woman asked gently.