You could feel the tension in the air the next morning. An outsider would think nothing of it, but the fact there was no laughter, no screaming said a lot. The camp was mute.

Ayamin and I packed up everything inside our half-dry tent and left the outside completely untouched. Occasionally I’d glance at the border guards. They didn’t seem to notice us.

None of the refugees spoke to me, but at the same time, no one told us not to come. In my mind that was about as good an invite as we were going to get.

As night approached, Ayamin and I were rearing to go. We sat in our tent talking about leaving the mud behind.

Darkness fell and we began to hear soft Arabic voices and the clinking of metal as tents were packed away.

Ayamin and I crawled from ours, dragging the backpack behind us. We had our poles folded up and pegs stashed away by the time the first families began to leave. Someone had judged the night perfectly, and there were only clouds in the sky, with no moon to light us up.

Ayamin and I stuffed the fabric of the tent into the pack, and I hoisted it onto my back – groaning just a little, ‘I don’t remember it being this heavy,’ I said.

Ayamin poked me in the shoulder, ‘You’ve just got lazy, that’s why.’

I reached for her, but she darted away, ‘See slowpoke?’

Then with white teeth grinning in the night, we made our way towards the forest.

The fallen tree over the stream sat in place, but it was hard to balance in the near-darkness. A woman in the family in front of us had a dim torch that they shone to help us cross.

‘Thank you,’ I said in Arabic. The man beside her smiled until the dull light showed my face, then he turned to the woman.

‘Turn around, let’s go,’ he said to her, before letting out an angry string of words that I didn’t ask Ayamin to translate for me.

‘I’m guessing he’s not my biggest fan.’ I whispered as I helped Ayamin over a branch that blocked the path.

We followed the pinpricks of light and the trail that another group had left, stumbling and falling over sticks and stumps and shrubs until we reached what was basically the entire population of the camp all gathered upon the riverbank.

Wary eyes turned to us and some people murmured a little to each other. I gazed at the river, pretending I didn’t see it

While latecomers continued to arrive, the camp watched two men tie a long rope around the waist of a fit-looking, sixteen-year-old guy.

When the rope was secured, an older man called out and everyone with a torch aimed it at the river. The rope guy took a series of breaths, then plunged into the fast-moving water.

His head broke through the surface and he began swimming long freestyle strokes towards the other shore. It wasn’t until he reached the middle that he began to drift downriver.

The men on our side continued letting out the rope until the teenager had washed up on the other bank. He was ten meters further downstream than where he’d started. As he hauled himself up, everyone around us gave a small cheer for him. Ayamin took my hand as the men on our side tied the rope onto a sturdy looking tree, ‘It’s going to be freezing.’ she whispered.

I nodded, ‘How about we just sneak into first class on a train?’

She grinned, ‘Champagne and decent food would be a hardship, but I guess it’s one we could bear.’

I stared up at the sky, she looked across the water, ‘One step closer to England,’ she whispered.

The guy who’d swum across ran up the riverbank until he was standing opposite us. He wrapped the rope around the base of a sturdy tree once, twice, three times then tied it off and gave the thumbs up.

Whole families with the kids riding on their parents’ shoulders began to slosh through the water. When the current caught them our fellow refugees clung to the rope that had been set up, using it to drag themselves across.

I spotted my campfire bread family down by the water and nudged Ayamin, ‘Come on, let’s go.’

We stood to our feet and moved to the water’s edge. The grandma was trying to organise everybody. One of her sons had to take his daughter across, but that only left one son for her husband in the wheelchair.

‘We’ll have to come back for you,’ she was saying. But then she heard our footsteps and the old woman stared at me as I came to a stop in front of her.

I smiled and nodded to her and that seemed to be enough.

‘England man take him,’ Grandma said, pushing her son to the other side of the wheelchair.

I looked from the grandfather to the son and nodded at each of them before the son and I hoisted his father, chair and all, onto our shoulders.

We sloshed into the water. And as it began to fill my boots, I let out a little yell of excitement. The cold had got my adrenaline flowing. I felt strangely alive.

By the time the son and I were reaching the middle we were finding it harder and harder to reach the bottom, the cold water came up to our chests and we began to drift downstream until we hit the rope. It dug into my side as I fought to get a foothold. The son slipped and disappeared under completely. The old man’s feet and knees dipped into the water.

I pushed a little further towards the other side before I too felt my head drop beneath the surface. Dark water swirled around me and my arms and shoulders were aching from carrying the grandad, I felt my knee hit rock and that made me kick out instinctively, my foot pushed against the sand and I shot back to the surface. The rope grazed my side as I leant into it. I found my next foothold, took a deep breath and pushed once more. This time I didn’t go under.

The son grinned at me and clung to the wheelchair. He was shivering like crazy, but the ground was beginning to slope upward. ‘Let’s go, let’s go!’ he whispered.

Behind us, Ayamin held the pack above her head as she emerged from beneath the water.

At the other side two men helped lift the grandfather from our shoulders, we climbed up onto the bank and I slapped hands with the son. Both of us grinned in the cold.

‘Well done,’ he said in Arabic, and I nodded, ‘To you too.’

The grandfather laughed, ‘I feel like a king.’

The two of us helped Ayamin get the pack up the bank. When she hugged me I could feel her relief. It wasn’t just making it across the river, we’d also left the dreaded field of mud behind.

We shoved on some dry clothes and our wet boots, then she took my hand again, ‘Time for the open road!’

One of the men took the lead, and we began walking along a small footpath that led away from the river. I helped the family out with their wheelchair a few times as dawn began to approach, and the grandma helped our stomachs with a snack of seeds.

By the time the sun was up, we’d met a road end. Family groups began to leave with spaces of five minutes between each one and soon Ayamin and I were walking alongside our new adopted family, with Grandma leading us from the front.