It was midnight before I was sure everyone was asleep. At dinner we’d been warned again about the dangers of sneaking out. These included; death, being held hostage, broken bones, getting a cold, and no dessert for a month.

But at the same time, I didn’t care. There was a beautiful girl waiting for her ice cream and I intended to deliver.

I veered off from the bathroom and made my way into the kitchen where I’d stored a spare ice cream carton in the top freezer. Ice cream was strictly for celebrations, but I figured any time I got to spend with Ayamin was a celebration.

I slid back the door and slipped outside, then crouched down beside the wall and waited for our guard to move off.

There was a slight chill in the air, almost enough to make me want something more than a t-shirt. I could hear a baby crying and vehicles on a faraway road.

The soldier moved to the other side of the containers. The hollow thud of his boots disappeared. I ran.

The night air cooled me. All the tents were various shades of grey. It was only the starry sky that had any colour to it.

I made it to the hospital and retraced the route Ayamin had shown me. I reached the Winnie the Pooh tent and stopped, listening to see if she was awake.

A zip sounded and Ayamin’s head popped out, ‘About time. I could hardly sleep.’

She grabbed my hand and pulled me inside, boots and all. Ayamin zipped up the tent and turned to me, a flashlight was in one hand, and her face deadly serious.

‘Please tell me you brought ice cream.’

I almost joked that we had none left, but I realised she’d tear me apart before I could say I was kidding. I handed the carton over.

Her voice cracked as she spoke, ‘I didn’t actually… expect you to have it.’ She held the ice cream like a child as she gazed at it, ‘Boysenberry, oh man.’

She threw her arms around me, tackling me onto the airbed.

‘Ayamin,’ I laughed, ‘Are you crying?’

‘I really miss ice cream,’ she held me a moment longer, her head was warm against my chest. ‘Now let’s get some teaspoons and we can watch these stars.’

While I ruffled through her kitchen box Ayamin went outside and there was a zipping sound. She tugged at the tent until I could see a square patch of the stars above us. She crawled into the tent beside me. I handed her the ice cream and a spoon and we lay back on the inflatable mattress, looking up at the sky.

My eyes adjusted until the stars glowed bright. I could see red, white, orange, and purple.

‘If we were more practical grandma and I could have found a slightly better tent. But if we weren’t able to see the sky whenever we wanted, I don’t think we’d have made it this far.’

She pulled out a spoonful of vanilla ice cream with boysenberries dripping from it, put the spoon in her mouth and closed her eyes.

A moan came from her throat. Ayamin shook her head, ‘Six months of care packages and a sack of rice. You have no idea how good this taste.’

I tried to imagine that I was in her position, nothing but bland food for months… probably some of them spent on the brink of starvation. I touched the spoon to my lips and closed my eyes.

It was okay, probably on par with the cheapest stuff you could buy in supermarkets, but Ayamin didn’t seem to care. She treated the ice cream like it was made of gold.

‘When I move to Britain,’ she said, ‘I’m going to eat ice cream after dinner every night. I’m going to become an ice cream collector; I’ll make world records for the amount of ice cream I eat.’

She took another spoonful and handed the tub back to me, ‘When I’m sad I’ll have special ice cream for that. When I’m happy I’ll have ice cream to celebrate.’

Her words made my next mouthful sweeter – I could taste the boysenberries, the cream.

‘Where in Britain would you go?’

She shifted slightly on the mattress. Her arm came to rest against mine.

‘Well, I’d live in London to start with. I want to feel what it’s like to live there, see the snow on the streets in winter, get a hot chocolate, and listen to people complain about the weather. I want to ride the underground and the London Eye and find a hidden bookshop in the backstreets.’

‘Then maybe the Scottish Highlands, a little cottage to make all cosy, all the beautiful lochs and old stone buildings you could ask for. After that who knows? Maybe Ireland, Wales…’

She was silent for a moment, ‘That’s the dream anyway. I’m still a long way from England, but when there’s no boysenberry ice cream on standby a dream can be the only thing to get you through.’

We stared up at the stars. Her arm against me was warm. I coughed and shifted a little closer.

‘You can come visit me, wherever the hell I’m living when I get back.’

Ayamin smiled up at me, ‘I’d like that. Maybe you can show me around. Take me to your parents.’

‘Umm…I could show you around… definitely.’

When I looked at Ayamin her eyes had this softness to them and her voice was low, ‘I forgot – tough family situation – I’m sorry.’

There was a moment of silence. When I spoke my voice was low and cracked, ‘I’m a foster care freak. Biologically speaking the people who created me are still walking around going about their lives. I just never met them.’

Her hand brushed my hand, then her fingers found the gaps between my fingers, ‘That’s rough Danny.’

I could see this epic swirl from the milky way, ‘How about you?’

‘I think I was kinda lucky, loving mum and dad, annoying little brother, and my grandma lived with us so I almost had two mums. It was a perfect little setup until about two years ago when an artillery shell or… something, blew up our house.’

She gave a little gasp, ‘Grandma and I were out buying bread. The house was basically dust, and we never even saw their bodies. After that we walked across the border, found a tent and shared it until her pneumonia got too bad.’

Her hand squeezed mine, ‘I feel like your story is worse in some ways, you never even got to know them.’

I rubbed her thumb, ‘I don’t feel the pain you do, it’s sort of a distant longing.’

We stopped talking for a while and I listened to the sound of Ayamin breathing. The air was starting to get a little chilly, but the places where our arms touched were just fine.

‘I’ve never had a conversation like this in English,’ Ayamin turned to look at me.

I laughed, ‘I’m available any time.’

She pulled a large woollen blanket from the front of the tent and draped it over the two of us, then leaned back, resting her head on my chest. She yawned as I put an arm around her.

If this was any other girl in any other place, I would’ve made my next move right then. Maybe a kiss on the forehead, or a not-so-subtle caress. But this felt different.

Maybe it was because we’d opened up to each other, or because I wasn’t even sure whether she liked me that way. Either way, I figured it wasn’t worth losing the beautiful Syrian girl.

I stared up at the sky and felt the slow rising and falling of her breath against my side. She was warm and it made me sleepy and comfortable just having her there.