Miss Butland ran down the path and swept her up in her arms, carried her back to Cook, and there was a submarine to make her feel better: ice-cold water in a misted glass, and submerged in it, a spoon of thick grape jam to lick. It was going to be all right, everyone was saying. They told her that, and then Mama told Cook. But the train never whistled again, and then Cook went off into Smyrna and never came back. The next day she found out, from Aleko the groom, that the Greek soldiers had eaten Rosie. And then Papa took Miss Butland to the British Consulate when the Greek soldiers had left and the Turkish soldiers arrived. ‘She will be quite safe. They’ve put her on a battleship,’ he told them when he returned, looking ruffled, more out of sorts than she had ever seen him. But Cook won’t be safe, and nor will the other servants. No safer than Rosie. But she can’t think about Rosie. She has decided she will never think of her, ever again.

She can hear something else behind her, above her parents’ soft voices. A low growl, like thunder rolling behind Nymph Dagh, but so low and powerful that she can feel it in her insides. And now it is louder. The wind has shifted slightly: she feels the boat jump forward. The sail above her snaps and ropes creak against wood. Her eyes begin to sting. There is a terrifying smell: burning, but not the friendly smell of a bonfire or a kitchen fire.

The girl sits up. She wants Mama to send the smoke and the noise away, so she turns around and, though she knows she shouldn’t, she looks behind her. She sees her father, arms spread across the spokes of the wheel, the faint glimmer of his smart white captain’s cap. And there is Mama, beside him, wearing her shooting clothes, a scarf tied around her head. But behind her parents, something else. Where the lights of the city should be is dense blackness slashed open to reveal a pulsing wound, dirty orange-red, almost too bright to look at. It throbs. It roars. She opens her mouth to scream. Perhaps she does scream. As the light pulses she sees other boats all around them, each one filled with shadows, and from them comes a sound, a thin wail that rises and falls, made up of whispers and sobbing.