Paul grabbed a corner of his pad with his inky fingers and flung it into the dirt. Hugo stared at it, unable to grasp what it was, but Rosie instantly recognised her father’s face. One side was an almost perfect drawing, but the other appeared twisted, with the eyeball sunk into the skull and a gaping wound filled with maggots in his cheek.

‘You little sicko,’ Rosie shouted. ‘Why have you got to draw him like that? Why can’t you do a nice picture?’

Paul scowled at his sister. ‘Because I don’t feel like making a nice picture, fatso.’

Rosie wasn’t fat, but she was sensitive about her stocky build and calling her fat was the easiest way to make her mad.

‘I can’t look at that,’ Rosie shouted, picking the pad off the floor, tearing off the page and ripping the drawing to shreds. She’d expected Paul to fight her, but he didn’t move.

‘Can you go now you’re done interfering?’ Paul said calmly.

If Paul had put up a fight Rosie would have felt OK about ripping up the drawing, but the way he sat there, staring pathetically, made her feel terrible. The drawing must have taken hours.

‘I’m sorry,’ Rosie said sheepishly, as the wind picked up squares of torn paper.

‘If you say so,’ Paul said.

Rosie felt like her brother was dead inside. She wanted to grab him and thump him until he came back to life.

‘Can’t you at least talk to me?’ Rosie begged. ‘I’m hurting too, you know. What is it you want?’

‘We should have gone south, like we agreed in the first place,’ Paul said. ‘Not stayed here with Father Doran and his sister.’

‘It’s safe here,’ Rosie groaned. ‘People were dying on the roads, Paul. Probably still are. Here we’ve got good food, clean water, somewhere decent to sleep …’

Paul shook his head. ‘Dad’s last words were Find Henderson, give him the papers. And what are we doing? Sitting on our arses, drawing pictures and playing with six year olds.’

‘Dad would have wanted us to be safe more than anything else,’ Rosie said. ‘We’ve been through his pocket book. We’ve been through every one of the documents in the briefcase, looking for a reference to Henderson, and there’s nothing. No phone number, no address, no details of who he works for.’

‘But people in England would know, Rosie. If we went south and got a boat to England we could contact someone and find Henderson’s assistant: Miss McAfferty.’

‘Probably,’ Rosie said. ‘But even if we make it to Bordeaux – two hundred kilometres on foot, and in this heat – how can we be sure that there’s a boat leaving for England? If there is a boat, you can bet your life that there are going to be thousands of refugees trying to get on board.’