‘She’s not broken, Zoë! Look!’ He holds the bouzouki by its neck and jabs the head at the sky. The sun catches the mother of pearl and it flashes like lightning. ‘Didn’t I say I was worried she’d break her neck?’

‘Oh, Pavlo. I love you.’ Zoë slumps down next to him. His cigarettes are still in his waistcoat pocket. She pulls out the flat white Papastratos box with its gold circle and big red number one. Her hands are shaking so badly that she can hardly light one for Pavlo and one for herself. ‘I saw Vangeli …’ Suddenly, she begins to cry, great heaving sobs. ‘Horrible, horrible,’ she manages, between spasms.

‘My God.’ Pavlo leans against her. ‘What have we done, Zozo?’

‘We?’ Zoë has managed to get herself under control.

‘The world. This fucking world! Now I know why Mama never made us pray to the icon. God’s a monster. Zoë … in my jacket pocket … inside.’ His voice has changed. There is a familiar whine: the pain, she tells herself, but when she follows his instructions and slips her hand into the pocket, the little glass bottle she finds has POISON printed on the label in red, and in smaller letters, morphine tartarate. ‘A New Zealand medic sold them to me,’ Pavlo says, taking the bottle with trembling hands.

‘This isn’t why you went to Khalkis?’ she asks, suddenly very tired. But Pavlo laughs weakly.

‘Why would I bother? There’s so much junk in Athens now, with all the soldiers …’ He trails off, and studies the label. ‘Half a grain … for fuck’s sake,’ he mutters, and shakes out a handful, nine or ten pills.

‘Pavlo!’ Zoë shouts, but he has already shoved them into his mouth. He chews, wincing, and swallows with difficulty.

‘Five grains is hardly anything, Zozo,’ he whispers, and leans his head back against the tree. He closes his eyes, then opens them again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘But you know, if there was a doctor here, what would he do, eh? Pills …’ His eyes close again and his tongue, pale and flecked with half-dissolved white powder, runs slowly across his lips.

Zoë will never know what she is about to do – force his mouth open like a dog and stick her fingers into it, perhaps, dredge out the morphine sludge – because just then there is a low rumbling and she crouches, thinking it is another plane, but then she hears Apostoli yelling over by the road and sees that a small car is coming down the wide loop of road towards them. Pavlo’s head keeps falling forward onto his chest. She has seen him nodding off many times before and she hates it: it terrifies her. ‘Pavlo!’ she says into his ear. But he just grins at her, sloppily, showing his pill-speckled teeth.

‘Zoë! Pavlo!’ Apostoli is yelling at them from a few yards down the road. ‘Come here! Quickly!’