She is singing the last chorus when she realises that Mama isn’t singing with her, but she doesn’t care. She slips her voice in amongst the instruments and lets the music fill up her chest. It feels like nothing she has ever felt before. So much feeling: she doesn’t know what to do with it, so she lets it out in the song. Not happiness; not sadness either, but beautiful dread, as if the music is a window onto the real world, a vastness of pitiless beauty and desolation. She is walking beside her father in the laughing streets of Smyrna. She sees the red mouth swallowing the city. She thinks of bayonets.

CHAPTER SIX

Devon, England, 1931

There is no one to collect Tom on the last day of term. He has been expecting his father to turn up in his Riley Nine, a sporty little car done up in British racing green which, though a bit impractical for transporting Tom’s trunk and assorted bags, always gets a look of guarded envy from the other boys. But after he has been lurking in the hall just inside the main doors for long enough to feel mildly embarrassed, the headmaster’s wife bustles up, fiddling nervously with her beads, and tells him that there has been a change of plan.

‘Your father has just telephoned us, Collyer,’ she says, sounding slightly more flustered even than usual, ‘to say that he’s had an unavoidable engagement. It is a little inconvenient …’ She winds the necklace around her middle finger. ‘But we’ll manage!’ she continues brightly. ‘A taxi’s been ordered to take you to the station. Mr Frye says you should just catch the 11.52.’

‘Oh.’ Tom opens his mouth to say something else, but shuts it again.

‘The bursar will provide you with funds for your ticket – your father to reimburse us,’ she adds, firmly.

‘It’s ever so kind of you to go to all this trouble, Mrs Meade.’ Tom pauses. He doesn’t want her to see that he is upset. He clears his throat. ‘What about my trunk, though? It’s just that I have to change at Newton Abbot, and then there’s a walk from the station.’

‘Your father …’ Mrs Meade frowns. ‘We’ll arrange with Captain Collyer to have it collected,’ she says. ‘At his expense.’ Tom thinks he hears a hint of doubt in her voice. He isn’t surprised.

‘It must have been something jolly important for him not to turn up,’ Tom says, hopefully.

‘Oh. Yes, well, I’m sure it was. Now then, let’s just go and see the bursar, shall we?’