He sat in silence for a while. ‘I have decided, I will wait until this war is over, then I will ask you to leave the Englishman and join me on my beautiful Greek island. While I wait, I’ll build you the most wonderful house of stone that looks out over the sea. I’ll plant olive trees, so we are rich with oil, and grapes to make the sweetest wine. There will be many almond trees, for their beautiful blossom in the spring, and walnut trees for fine nuts in the autumn. We will have beehives, full of golden thyme honey, and because you are English, we’ll have roses . . . the biggest red roses.’

This was too much for me. I didn’t want him to leave.

He lifted my chin. ‘Why you cry, Gertie? I love you. One day we’ll be together, agapi mou.’

‘Oh, Manno, I wish with all my heart.’

We talked through the night, only stopping while I fed Adam. Manno watched, his face alight with awe. My heart was breaking as dawn approached. I knew I would never leave Johnathan. I had put his life in danger, made him lose his leg. I could not break his heart too. Manno’s plan was all a dream, a fairy tale, doomed from the start.

At five o’clock, as dawn broke, I started to wrap Adam in a blanket with the intention of placing him in the perambulator.

‘Wait!’ Manno said, picking him up tenderly. He held him in front of his face and spoke seriously to our beautiful baby. ‘My son, you must grow big and strong, and take care of your mother. You must do this for me, because I love her with all my heart. Your name is Adam, but I give you your Greek name. You, my son, are Hephaestus, blacksmith, god of fire and strength, because you were born from the fiery passion between your mother and me, your father, inside a house of stone, on the island of Syros. I don’t know when I will see you again, but you will always be in my heart, and I will think about you every day, until I die. On this, I swear.’ He gently kissed Adam’s cheeks, his forehead, and his mouth, then lay him on the settle and kissed the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. When he stood, and passed our baby back to me, his eyes were full of tears.

‘I will walk to the gate with you, Manno.’ I could hardly say the words for the pain in my throat. Would I ever see him again? ‘Kiss me one last time.’ My heart was breaking. All the love I had for him seemed to fill me in that moment. Oh, how I wanted to go back to Greece with him. We broke apart, and I tried to stifle my sobs as we stepped outside.