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– I wasn’t going to get too close – but I heard myself say that he seemed worried.
    ‘In the jungle, good and bad people. All mix,’ he said. ‘Before we come here, I keep her in the shelter. And always I stay nearby. Men, too many men…’ He shook his head. ‘Some women, they have no money to pay smuggler.’
    ‘Did you pay smuggler?’ My English, never fluent, became even more abrupt and approximate, echoing his.
    ‘Of course I pay.’
    I sat down across the table from him, kept my eyes on him. He shrugged and, in his exhausted flat voice, told me about the money. After his father was killed and they’d left Syria, he and his sister, he’d saved some money, working in Turkey in a car wash and as a waiter in a restaurant. Nalin had sold her gold. He’d paid 900 euros for two places on a boat across to Greece(vomiting on board, wading drenched to the shore, a fire on the beach, kind Greek fishermen bringing food). From Greece to Macedonia, forty euros for tickets for a bus, seven hours.
    ‘Wait, wait,’ I said. I brought my laptop to the table to follow the journey on Google Maps.
    ‘In Macedonia, they give us a piece of paper to get to Serbia by train. Now, we have no money. We sleep two nights in a bus station. From Serbia to Croatia, then to Hungary we go by train, 4,000 people in one train, free for everyone. Hungary to Austria.’
    I tracked the story with my finger across the map on the screen, zooming in, zooming out. It was a saga he was describing, an odyssey. No – I recalled the mass of figures I’d seen on the news, trudging across Eastern Europe – it was something more brutal, like a forced march. I glanced up at the portrait of Grand-père, Resistance hero. It crossed my reluctant mind that he’d have taken a stand if he were still alive. He’d have been on the side of the weary marchers.
    ‘In Germany, in Passau city,’ Omid continued, ‘the police catch us in the train station. They want to take my fingerprints. I say, “I don’t want to stay in this country because I have family in UK.” They say, “No problem, it’s just for numbers.” I say, “I don’t want, I don’t want,” but they force us.’
    As he recounted this, he clenched his fists, tucking in his thumb, hiding his prints.
    ‘Why didn’t you want to give your fingerprints?’
    ‘It is law in Europe. Where they take your prints, that is the country you must get asylum. I must not get stuck, madame. I must find my mother.’
    He uncurled his fingers and we both looked down at his palms, open on the kitchen table. His future, quite literally, in his hands, at his fingertips. Then he smiled up at me, his old man’s tired, ironic smile on his boy’s face.
    I wanted to give him something, so I stepped out onto the terrace to collect the quinces I had picked. The strong scent of the fruit filled the dining room and Omid let his head fall back. ‘Perfume,’ he said. He closed his eyes and breathed it.
    He hated to ask for anything, that boy. It offended him, his honour. But the laptop stood open on the table next to the fruit basket and now he asked if he could use it to check his emails.
    I don’t offer it to guests – they can use the Wi-Fi on their own devices – but this boy could barely hold on to his boots, his sister or his fingerprints on that journey, never mind a computer.
    ‘Not every day,’ I said, ‘but now, today, you may.’
    I looked over his shoulder as he typed in his address on Gmail. It ended with what looked like a date.
    ‘Ah,’ I said, making conversation. ‘Year of your birth – 1994?’
    He looked alarmed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not 1994, 1999. I am a minor. I am seventeen.’
    The quince-scented moment had passed. Omid banged hard on the keys, typing in a foreign language,hurrying to be done and gone. I gritted my teeth to stop myself telling him not to pound, to type softly. This is why I must keep my life and my things to myself, my thoughts went. It was only after he’d