1Prologue2Derailment3Cut off4Central Station (1)5Children on the tracks6Central Station (2)7In the dump warehouse8Sunday afternoon. Emil starts writing... about four stray kids... and their discovery... nightly hang-out... over the tracks9Back in the warehouse10Approach 11Emil in the city12Evening in Bert’s’ AsylumMarcoAnn-LillyOnce again MarcoJan and DavidEmil en Ann-LillyBartIn the hospitalBert’sJoris13Death entersJoris againDoorFrightenedEmil14Business as usual15Reconstruction16How to proceed17Victim’s Support18Back into the world19EpilogueHow does a child become a stray child? Not on purpose.How does it find a home again?In this case by a derailed train.‘First a toughy, then a lucky one,’ David said.Tramps. How can it come to this with anyone anyway? Usually it originates with bad luck. When there is no one to help you and you panic, bad luck stacks bad luck and you lose everything. Addicts, old people who can no longer keep up with the times, single people who are evicted because of debts. There are also children among them. Isolated fringe figures, of whom we sometimes catch a glimpse in a corner of the eye. Because invisibility is a survival strategy. Sometimes something happens to them that allows them to recover. By accident they are able to regain a place in society.The players in this narrative are four vagrant children, a lapsed college student, a very young heroin hooker and some old people. The accident is a gigantic derailment that takes place over their heads and beyond their experience.The cards are reshuffled for a while. Emil manages to start a new game with them. With the children, three old eccentrics and Ann-Lilly, whom he rescued and.... no, you better read that.He realized with razor-sharp clarity that the last wagons, which were still approaching, collided with the derailed ones in front of them and the tail of the derailing train was still before the tunnel! In the next few seconds, wagons could tumble into the open space between the tunnels. On him! It dawned on his survival instinct that he was in mortal danger. An electrifying fear shot through his blood and gave him giant strength. With a swing, he stood up. In a reflex, he clamped the limp body on his back, taking the dangling arms in front of his chest in a firm grip. At that moment, contrasting with the illuminated rain sky, he saw tilting tank cars coming toward him. A snarl as of an attacking animal squeezed out of his throat and he shot into the safety of the dark tunnel mouth. The ground shook beneath his feet as the wagons crashed to the stones where he had been standing a moment ago, under the screech of twisting steel; fountains of sparks illuminated the tunnel far ahead of him.