The girl opens her eyes to a faintly glowing whiteness: milky, suffused with pink and orange, like the opal brooch Papa had once let her wear to the Cafe Trieste. When she breathes in, the air is clean, damp and salty. The thick, dirty stench from last night has all gone. Above her, the sails are hanging almost empty. Mama is sitting next to her on the rug, winding a bright silk scarf, yellow roses on a field of black and red, around the crown of her broad-brimmed hat. ‘What do you think?’ she asks as she puts on the hat, pins it into place and ties the ends of the scarf under her chin with a flouncy bow.

‘I like that one,’ says the girl, nodding. ‘Mama, where has the sea gone?’

‘It’s just mist, darling. It will blow away soon. And the sun is rising. Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘Where are we?’

‘I don’t quite know,’ Mama says. She stands up and brushes down her tweed skirt. ‘Somewhere near Andros, I think. I shall go and ask Papa.’

‘And ask him about Athens,’ the girl says. She reaches out for Mama but her fingers only catch a tiny fold of cloth and it twitches out of her grasp. ‘Do they have singers there? Do they have ice cream?’

‘Of course they have ice cream, koukla!’ Mama makes her way around the cabin to where Papa stands behind the wheel. He hasn’t moved at all while I’ve been asleep, she thinks. Morning seems to have sent away the horrors of last night. The soft mist that surrounds them muffles their voices and makes Thetis seem like a funny sort of long, whitewashed room. Dew shines on polished brass and varnished wood. The girl yawns loudly and stretches. She sees Mama lean against Papa and put her arm around his waist. Beyond the rail, there is a narrow strip of water, as slick and shimmery as blue glass, across which Thetis is moving so slowly that she is barely leaving a wake, and then white mist, a soft, undulating wall. She hears the clink of china, the sound deadened by the mist. Mama is coming back towards her, edging along the narrow walkway between the cabin and the rail. She is carrying a pink plate. On the plate is a white napkin, folded crisply into a square, and on the cloth rests a piece of sweet milk pudding. The girl sees it all with perfect clarity: the knife-sharp corners of the napkin, the pale yellow custard held between two layers of brown, crisp pastry.

‘Breakfast!’ Mama calls.

‘Mary?’ There is something sharp in Papa’s voice. He is looking over his left shoulder, staring intently into the mist. ‘Can you hear something?’

‘What, darling?’

‘There.’ Papa pushes his cap back on his head and frowns. ‘There! Engines!’

‘I don’t … Yes, yes, there is something!’