“Precisely the question I would like answered,” agreed Sister Marguerite. “I don’t like it. I don’t know what her game is. And whatever it is, Max, I’m afraid she will almost certainly have noticed that you were also following Ester.”

Max’s heart skittered again, thinking of Celeste’s dragon smile. What was she up to? For a while the two of them sat in silence, thinking, while the Ister slid through the darkness. Then Marguerite stood up abruptly, and pulled the curtains shut.

“Bed,” she said. “I might not be the most conventional guardian in the world, but I can still enforce bedtime.” And she shooed Max off the seats, and began turning them into berths. “Go on, go and get our bedding. It’s in the guard’s room this time. At the end of the train.”

So Max pottered down to the guard, and picked up two packs of bedding. She paused on the way back to lean her forehead on the cold glass of a corridor window and think about what she had learned. It was hard to adjust to Klaus as a violent gang member. And why was Celeste mixed up with them? And had she, Max, got tangled up in it now too?

The window was open at the top, and there was an icy draught on the back of her neck. The train had stopped at its first station; an electric light picked out the sign, which proclaimed they were in SZOLNOK. Nothing moved in the frozen night. For a minute there was just cold, and peace.

Then Max saw a shadowy figure cross the platform. It was Rupert. He walked right up close to her window, and for a moment Max thought he had come to talk to her. She almost waved. But then he stopped a foot away, under a ghostly overhead light, and she realized that he was by a payphone – it was a red phone mounted on a platform pillar, with a plastic shell above and around it. He stepped under the shell. Max ducked down out of sight and waited, hardly breathing, determined not to miss a word.

Whoever picked up spoke first, and at length. Max knew because there was an eternity of uninterrupted silence before Rupert was allowed to speak. Thankfully, his English was clipped and clear, and Max could mostly follow.

“I said I’d call. I keep my promises. I’m sorry I’m late – there wasn’t time at Budapest.”

A shorter silence.

“No. Not yet.”

A medium-sized silence. Max peeked over the edge of the window. Rupert was hidden by the shell, only his legs showing. His trousers were too short. “There’s no need for that,” he said. He sounded much less vague than usual, and strained. “No need. Be reasonable. I’m telling you I’ll get it.”