Hot water is fetched in a big bowl, with a sponge and the cleanest towels that Niko has. A steaming jug is set down by the door. When the men have left her, Zoë slides the bolt on the door and kicks off her shoes. She undresses, shivering but glad to be rid of her ruined clothing. As she peels off her blouse she smells blood again. Tomorrow she will burn everything. Thank God she has a change of clothes here somewhere. She puts the bowl on the floor and steps into it. Slowly, she sponges off her legs, letting the water trickle down, threading red into the bowl. She has a nasty bruise on one shin and a network of shallow cuts across her thighs. Everywhere the sponge goes it discovers something painful. When her legs are clean, she throws the water out of the window, refills the bowl and finishes washing herself. By now she is rigid with cold, and the towels aren’t big enough to wrap herself in. She has to bite her lip to stop her teeth rattling together. When she is dry she finds her nightdress, pulls it on and climbs slowly into the narrow iron bed.

Though she desperately wants to sleep, the chill has woken up her body. Her heart is racing; her mind is a movie screen and the projectionist has broken the projector. She lies there, staring up at the beams of the ceiling, the undersides of the roof tiles, the mortar. Cobwebs. An early gecko. Above the tiles, open sky. An air raid starts, sirens protesting, the rhythmic hammering of anti-aircraft guns, very close. She hears a mewing sound, thin and desperate. In the refugee camp below the Acropolis, the men had made snares to try and catch rabbits, and she had found one once, struggling, one leg half gone, mewing like a kitten. But the sound is coming from her. I’ll never be free of this, she thinks. The pilots floating up there above Piraeus: they are all looking down, and they all see her. Everything fractures: she is the pilot, looking through the angled crystal of her sights, watching herself on the bed, twisting her legs in the sheets, mewing in terror.

Don’t worry, Miss Valavani. You’re safe.