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them now.
    Then Charlie settled down in the cabin. He didn’t want anyone on the ship to notice him, so he’d stay put until dark, and then make his way up the ladder. He lay back and gazed up at the great crimson hull to which he was tethered, wondering again who would have a ship like that, and where it was going. He could see the ship’s name, Circe, painted in gold on the curve of her great bow. Circe—he’d heard that name before . . . pronounced Sirky . . . now what was it . . . After a while he recalled that it was the name of the witch who enchanted Odysseus on his way back from the Trojan War. His dad had read it to him. She’d turned all his sailors into pigs and kept Odysseus for a whole year, making him forget his wife and his son at home in Ithaca. Circe. Odd name for a ship, when the Circe in the story had disrupted Odysseus’s sea voyage so effectively.
    The angle at which the little boat was tethered made it impossible for Charlie to face the direction of the Circe for long, as all the blood was going to his head, so he turned himself around and watched the last of the city disappear along the banks. By now they were way beyond the tall, shining buildings of the office district. The wharves and warehouses and stone quays of the big dockyards were giving way to the smaller ship-repair yards, the houses on stilts where the wharf workers lived, and finally the wide, empty mudflats and saltmarshes, where the light hung like gauze, and the silvery grasses rippled, and the tiny voices of hundreds of invisible birds carried over the water, mingling with the rush of the river beneath the little boat’s hull. Charlie thought it must be rather nice to live there in one of the stilt houses, with the veranda looking out over the river, and the water slapping underneath. You could fish for your dinner out of your bedroom window, with the great expanse of sky and water all around you, and the sea sliding in beneath your home twice a day. He wondered why they didn’t have stilt houses in the west of the city, farther inland, where he lived; why instead people there lived in housing towers or yard houses like his.
    He didn’t want to think about home. He could feel the presence of his mother’s phone in his bag, and suddenly thought—Mum may not have her phone, but what about Dad?
    He pulled out his own phone and swiftly dialed in his dad’s number. His heart beat fast and his hands were shaking. His dad might answer. He might.
    The phone rang in a dim empty distance. Rang too long. Then—his dad’s voice. His recorded message: “Hello, this is Aneba Ashanti, leave me a message and I’ll be in touch with you soon.”
    His dad’s voice. Charlie felt it deep in his heart.
    He wished he’d thought what to say—what was safe to say. If they —whoever they were—were going to listen to the message, he didn’t want to give anything away. But he wanted his dad to know—what? And he had to leave the message now, because what if he couldn’t get through again? He couldn’t waste this opportunity.
    Suddenly he knew what to do. He’d leave a message like his mum’s note. Clear to them, but not revealing anything.
    “Hi, Daddy,” he said cheerfully. “Charles here. I’m being a good boy like Mummy said and I’m at Rafi and Martha’s, but I’m going out quite a lot and I really hope I will see you soon. I’ve been sailing on the river today and I hope I’ll do some more tomorrow! Ring me soon, I’ve got my phone on all the time. Lots of love to Mummy. Bye!”
    He was really pleased with himself. If Dad got that message he’d understand immediately that Charlie knew what was going on. One: He never called him Daddy, or Mum Mummy—so they’d know he’d picked that up from Mum’s message. Plus the “being a good boy” reference and calling himself Charles. “Going out quite a lot” and “sailing on the river” was pretty clear, and the pièce de résistance —the best bit, which had come to