Then there was dinner as usual, and coffee as usual, and the evening news as usual, and at last it was time to pack. Max packed her new notebook and her old one, with the maps and notes on Munich-Budapest-Bucharest-Istanbul. She packed her clothes and washbag and hairbrush and the book she was reading. She double-checked everything. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, watching the street lamp outside her window blink on and off, and she felt a bit peculiar. She went downstairs to see what everyone else was up to, but they were all busy preparing for meetings or studying chessboards or being-too-old-for-things, so she came back upstairs again. There was nothing else to do, so she changed into her pyjamas, and went to bed.

That night, she dreamt. The dreams were the messy sort that never really decide what they are about – she was running on and off trains, and trying to best a nun at an impossible game of chess, and searching everywhere for her red armchair in the attic, which always seemed to be just around the corner. Everything was washed in blue light, pulsing on and off, on and off. Eventually she woke herself up with worry, and by then it was dawn outside, and she was too hungry and alert to sleep again.

Suddenly, she was afraid to leave.

It was a feeling without words or shape, but it covered her all over, like being soaked in cold water. She missed her home, and she hadn’t even left it yet. She missed the way that things happened at the same time every day, and she missed the heavy curtains and dim lamps and soft carpets, and she missed her own armchair with the skylight overhead.

Just lying there made the feeling worse, so she got up, put on her slippers, and went up to the attic. “I want to go,” she told herself, “and I won’t feel homesick.” The sky outside was turning silver, and as she watched it lighten, she began to feel slightly steadier. “Munich,” she whispered. “Budapest. Bucharest. Istanbul.”

But by the time Sister Marguerite arrived, she was still feeling the strange cold-water fear. When she heard the doorbell, something inside her twisted sharply. She picked up her case and went downstairs to meet her chaperone.

To be honest, Sister Marguerite was not one hundred per cent reassuring. She somehow just looked like the sort of person who would always be tripping over things and missing trains and getting lost and so on. She was enormously tall, with miles of grey sock sticking out underneath her habit, and her wimple framed a long, lopsided face with an even longer nose. Max wasn’t sure how you were meant to wear a wimple, but she was pretty sure that Sister Marguerite had got it wrong.