Dr Tami told her the man was not to be pestered. She could look at him, but she wasn’t to be a nuisance. Dr Tami was gone now, left the sick bay to visit someone who’d had a fall on one of the other platforms and possibly broken something.

The man’s dark hair tumbled down in lank ringlets onto the pillow. He looked like the picture of Jesus Martha had shown her once; a peaceful, kind face, not etched with angry lines around his eyes, but kind lines . . . a man used to smiling.

A coil of limp hair was curled into his beard and stuck in the corner of his mouth. She reached over the bed and pulled it away from his dry lips.

‘You poor, poor thing,’ she uttered softly as if this sleeping man was a baby griping and mewling with wind. His eyelids quivered ever so slightly, then a moment later flickered open.

‘Oooh,’ whispered Hannah.

Brown eyes, unfocused and dazed, darted around the cabin walls, the ceiling above him, the small porthole opposite, then finally onto Hannah.

She smiled. ‘Hello, my name’s Hannah.’

He stared at her silently.

‘You’re sick,’ she added, ‘you got shot by bad men and you’re poorly. Dr Tami said you have to stay in bed and I’m not to be a nuisance.’

His eyes narrowed, dark brows locked as he studied her. Finally the thick thatch of bristles around his mouth stirred and parted. ‘Pplease . . . you have water?’

For a moment she struggled to make sense of the man’s strange accent.

‘Water?’ he rasped again, voice thick with phlegm.

Then she understood. She grinned and nodded, eager to be like Dr Tami, caring for a patient just like a real doctor. She clacked quickly across the floor and poured treated rainwater from a jug into a plastic tumbler. She came back to the bedside and held it out proudly in front of her.

‘Please . . .’ he whispered softly.

He was asking for help to sit up. Just like she’d seen the doctor do before, she reached up on tiptoes to slide a small hand behind his head, tilting it as best she could so that he could drink from the tumbler. She tipped the cup carefully, some of the water going where it was intended, the rest soaking into his thick beard and trickling down either side of his face and onto the pillow.

‘There, there,’ she cooed softly. She eased his head back. ‘Is that much better?’

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and returned her smile. ‘Better, thank you,’ he replied, his voice a little stronger now; more than a dry rattling whisper.

‘My name’s Hannah,’ she said again. ‘I’m nearly five years old.’

He smiled. ‘I thought . . . I thought you were an angel,’ he replied. ‘Just now . . . when I opened my eyes.’

‘An angel!’ Hannah giggled at the thought of that, grinning like a Cheshire cat. ‘My nanna calls me that sometimes.’

His eyes went from her, back to the walls, the ceiling, the other cot in the sickbay. ‘Please, what is this?’

She knew what he was asking. ‘You’re in our home. We live above the water on big legs.’

He licked dry lips and winced with pain as he tried to sit up.

‘You have to sit very still,’ cautioned Hannah.

‘More water? Please?’ asked the man, glancing at the tumbler.

She helped lift his head again and held the tumbler to his mouth. ‘Dr Tami is going to make you better again with all her medicine.’ She let his head rest back again on the pillow when he’d finished the water.

He nodded gratefully. ‘Thank you.’

‘You are French,’ she informed the man. ‘Mum told me.’

He shrugged weakly. ‘No. Not French. Belgian.’

Hannah’s brow knotted. ‘Bell-gee-an. I never heard of that. Is it in Africa?’

‘Europe,’ he managed a wan smile, ‘what is left . . . at least.’

‘U-rope?’ she repeated the vaguely familiar name. She repeated it again under her breath, her face locked in concentration. ‘That’s another place, isn’t it? Is it an island? Like America?’

He shook his head, closing his eyes, dizzy and nauseous. ‘No, not really.’

Hannah felt a passing stab of guilt. Dr Tami had told her not to pester the man; that he was weak and needed as much rest as possible. And here she was pestering him.

‘I better go now,’ she said. ‘I have school soon.’

She turned to go.

‘Please!’ the man called out.

She stopped.

‘You . . . what you say your name is . . . ?’

‘My name’s Hannah Sutherland.’

He nodded. ‘Merci beaucoup - thank you very much - for the water, Hannah.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘My name is . . .’ he licked his lips, ‘my name is Valérie.’

Her eyebrows knotted disapprovingly. ‘Valerie? Ewww. That’s a girl’s name!’

He laughed tiredly, his head collapsing softly back against the pillow. ‘Girl, boy, is same en français.’

She thought about it for a moment. ‘You’re very funny.’

His eyes remained closed, the rustling sound of his breath growing long and even. He nodded sleepily. ‘I try.’

‘I should go now,’ she said again.

She thought he was asleep, but he cracked an eye open and winked. ‘Thank you, little angel.’

She was grinning as she fluttered down the corridor to the stairwell to deck B, carried aloft by the invisible little wings she’d suddenly decided to grow.