It was all going so well until Dean’s Bluetooth speaker gave out.

He’d had it pumping the entire ride, and danced to everything from reggae tunes to house music. Without the speaker, the van suddenly seemed much quieter.

The sun had almost set again and there were black rings around Dean’s eyes. In the distance, we could see the lights of Milan.

Ayamin and Mila were talking, Connor was sleeping and Dean was fidgeting with the wheel.

‘Are you sure it won’t go?’ he asked Mila.

‘It’s not going to go, Dean, just like the twenty other times you asked.’

He swore and tapped on the steering wheel. Then turned his attention to the radio.

‘I’m getting a little desperate.’

He flicked it on, an Italian pop song was playing.

The voice was soft and sweet and it was the sort of tune you could bop your head to.

‘What’s she saying?’ Dean asked Mila.

‘She’s talking about a girl – but she’s not just a girl she’s also the sun.’

Dean reached over and rubbed Mila’s shoulder, ‘Could you?…’

She rolled her eyes, ‘You always ask me to…’

‘I know. But you’re so good at it.’

‘Fine,’ Mila said, she turned down the volume of the radio slightly and began to translate the words.

‘Then one day she floated free.

She was too much, and not enough for he.

She had no more space,

And took to the stars.

Running her own race,

And bringing light to ours.

But when she saw her light reflected,

The feeling was more than she’d expected.’

We sat in silence after the song ended. Mila’s voice had a hypnotic tone.

Then a beeping came over the radio and a news broadcaster started delivering quick bursts of information in Italian.

Dean looked at Mila, and with a roll of her eyes, she continued translating.

‘blah blah blah… something about a new tax hurting people in Milan… um… The hunt for a British teenager who went missing from an aid programme in Turkey has resumed after the teenager was spotted in a bank in Austria.’

I drew in a breath and glanced sideways. Ayamin was looking at me, but everyone else seemed oblivious.

‘Danny Frey, now eighteen, was sent on the Red Cross expedition after he was convicted of the robbery and vandalism of a liquor store.’

As the announcer went further into my background, I felt Ayamin lean away from me. Her face had gone pale and her eyes burned into mine until I had to look away.

Dean had stopped tapping on the steering wheel and when he looked into the rear-view mirror, I knew that he knew.

When Mila was midway through translating a sentence, Dean reached across and turned the radio off.

Apart from the van’s whine, we sat in silence. Milan’s street signs flew past. I looked at Ayamin, she stared straight at me, straight into my eyes and soul. A tear flowed freely down her nose.

Conor woke up. Stretched out his legs. My throat was almost too dry to breathe.

‘I’ll drop you here,’ Dean said, pulling off the motorway.

Ayamin hoisted up our bag, and I slumped my way out the door after her.

‘Thanks for the ride Dean,’ I said.

He nodded, ‘Take care.’