Zoë prodded the pavement with a toe, and looked around. Smoke was rising from countless little fires. The harbour stretched away, a graceful arc blackened with a rust of human beings. Flies rose and fell in clouds. She realised then, because somehow she had not realised before, that this was all quite real. There was no going home. Everything was going to be broken from now on. Everything would be strange. This woman and her scared little boy were no more nor less strange and frightening than anything else. And Zoë, who for all of her short life had been given choices – which dress? This cake? That book? – understood that she would be given no more choices. It was an awful realisation, but oddly she felt her heartbeat slow, her face grow less hot. She turned back to the woman.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

‘Katina. Katina Valavani. And this is Pavlo.’

Zoë felt her shoulders begin to shake. I mustn’t cry, she tried to tell herself, but just as the tears started anyway, she was folded into strong arms and her salt-sore face was pressed against the black cloth of the woman’s dress. She whimpered, and breathed in the smells of sweat and smoke, and, very faint, the ghost of perfume.

‘It’s all right, little doll,’ the woman whispered into her hair. ‘My poor little darling. I’ll keep you safe. I promise.’

That had been this morning. Now, standing in the street on the outskirts of Athens, Zoë stares at herself in the window, stares and stares, fascinated and horrified at the same time, until Kyria Valavani touches her shoulder.

‘We’re moving again,’ she says. ‘We must be almost there, surely.’