He drove them to the ferry the next morning in his crappy old car that smelled of patchouli, and solemnly presented Dido with the flute. She beamed and hugged him, and Xanthe realized that Dido had never had a man in her life.

‘I think I need to come back,’ she muttered, into his ear, as she reached up to embrace his wiry strength. ‘Yes, you do,’ he said.

Dido and Xanthe, back in London, were shells. Xanthe went to work and Dido went to school, because that was what they had to do. It rained. Neither of them really made conversation except with each other. Xanthe did not email Nikolas, because there was nothing to be done. She felt calmer; she wasn’t as angry, not any more. One wet Sunday, Dido came into the living room and curled up in a ball at Xanthe’s feet on the sofa that doubled as her bed.

‘Mum, we’re sad here. We weren’t sad in Greece. Why don’t we go back?’

‘I’d love to, baba, but we have no money left for another holiday. We won’t be able to afford something like that for at least three years. And you have school.’

‘I could go to school in Greece, though. I could go to school on the island.’

Slowly it came out that Dido was hating her new secondary school, just as much as she’d hated primary. In fits and sobs, she confessed that she’d made no friends, and that some of the bigger boys had started calling her ‘Dildo’. Xanthe cursed again her own stupid 23-year-old self for thinking the name was romantic.

The meeting with her father had been brief. A table in his name at the Café Royal; he’d asked her to come to his office, and she’d said no, you can buy me lunch.

‘I want what’s owed to me as your daughter. I haven’t asked you for anything for fifteen years; I won’t ask you for anything again. I want to go home; I want to make a life for your grandchild there, and leave this miserable country behind. Nothing good has happened since you brought us here.’

The old bastard had been surprisingly compliant, agreeable even. She had anticipated more of a fight. He motioned to the waiter to top up their wine, and then wrote her a cheque, which he held in front of her.

‘One condition. We want to meet this grandchild.’

She flinched but, having suspected something like this, she already had her answer.

‘Mum can meet her. Not you. You know why.’

He looked away from her as he passed the cheque over. ‘Very well,’ he said. It was the closest he’d ever got to an acknowledgement.