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old when my father left for the Great War and I could barely remember what he had looked like before his injuries. The handsome, alert face that stared back at me from the photograph brought tears to my eyes. I turned towards the window, watching the farms and forests flicker by. After a while, overcome by the heat inside the carriage, the smell of unwashed bodies, and grief, I nodded off to sleep. The train clacked over the rails in a steady rhythm, the descent so gradual that I barely perceived it.
    We arrived in Marseilles in the early evening. The journey in third class had been more enjoyable, despite the noise and animal smells, than the time I had spent in second class. When we reached Sorgues, the conductor accompanied me to the omnibus train travelling to Marseilles and told the conductor there to give me a seat in a compartment. He put me with two women who were returning from Paris.
    ‘She is on her own,’ he explained to them. ‘Please keep an eye on her.’
    I couldn’t help staring at the women’s clothes. Their dresses were silk with V-necklines instead of round ones. Rather than pinching in at their waists, their belts were loose and dropped to their hips. Their skirts were so short I could see their shins when they crossed their legs. But their hats were plain and floppy, and made me think of convolvulus flowers. When I asked the women if they could tell me something about Marseilles, they pretended not to understand me. And I saw them roll their eyes when I pulled out the garlic sausage Aunt Yvette had packed for my lunch.
    ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t give us lice,’ one woman whispered to the other.
    I stared at my lap, my cheeks burning with shame. I was a poor girl but I had scrubbed myself and put on my best dress for the journey. But I forgot about the women’s nastiness when the train pulled into Gare Saint Charles; I had never seen so many people gathered in one place. Surely that was the entire population of my district bustling about on the station? I watched women hurrying back and forth, identifying their luggage; pedlars selling flowers and cigarettes; sailors lugging canvas bags on their shoulders; children and dogs perched on top of suitcases. But it was the array of languages babbling around me when I stepped onto the platform that most surprised me. The Spanish and Italian accents were familiar, but not those of the Greeks, the Armenians and Turks. I opened the map Uncle Gerome had given me and tried to figure out how long it would take to walk to the Vieux Port, where Aunt Augustine lived. It wasn’t long until sunset and I didn’t fancy tramping through a strange town at night.
    ‘It’s too far to walk,’ a sailor with a cigarette slung in the corner of his mouth told me when I showed him the map. ‘You’d better get a taxi.’
    ‘But I can’t afford a taxi,’ I said.
    He edged closer to me and smiled with teeth like a shark. I could smell the whisky on his breath. A shudder ran through me and I slipped back into the crowd. There was a woman near the station entrance peddling miniatures of the Basilique Notre Dame de la Garde, the domed basilica whose bell tower was topped by a gilded statue of the Virgin. I knew that the Christ mother was supposed to watch over those lost at sea. If I’d had the money, I would have bought one of the miniatures in the hope that she would watch over me.
    ‘Take the streetcar,’ the woman told me when I asked her how to get to the old port.
    I made my way to the spot outside the station where she had said to wait. A noise as loud as a thunderclap made me jump and I looked up to see a streetcar hurtling towards the stop. Clinging to the sides and running boards weredozens of bare-footed children with dirty faces. The car came to a stop and the children jumped off. I handed the conductor one of the coins my mother had given me and took a seat behind the driver. More people piled into the car, and new children—and some adults too—climbed