At that moment the door handle rattles. Their eyes widen. With the clarity of a nightmare, Zoë watches Tom’s hand drop to the butt of the large, greasy pistol on his belt. Behind his shoulder, she sees Christo grin at her as he raises his fingers, cocks back his thumb, and points towards the door.

‘Is there a way out?’ she hears Tom say. She looks down and sees her hand gripping his wrist. Then a hoarse voice, muffled but familiar, booms through the door.

‘Zozo? What the fuck is going on?’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

When Tom sees the fear leave Zoë’s face, he lets go of the pistol with an enormous sense of relief. He has never fired the thing in anger and he detests its weight and oily liquorice sheen. Zoë has already pushed back her chair.

‘It’s all right,’ she tells him, smiling for the first time today. ‘This is Niko! Stay here, please.’

She goes over to the door and peers quickly through a spyhole that Tom hasn’t noticed before. The lock rattles and she opens the door just enough to let two people slip through. When she sees who it is, she stifles a scream with her hands. Then she takes the first man by the arm and whispers urgently into his ear. The man looks towards Tom, scowling. He is of medium height, wiry, wearing a sharp peak-lapel suit of navy pinstripe cloth, a white shirt and what looks to Tom’s confused eyes like the red and yellow tie of the Marylebone Cricket Club. His moustache is waxed straight out and is almost wider than his face. Tom stands up, nervously, his hands half raised. I’m surrendering to a man in an MCC tie, he thinks.

The man, Niko, says something to Zoë. Then, in a couple of quick strides he is across the room. Tom notices that his movements are stiff but graceful, a dancer’s, before Niko has grabbed him and hugged him tightly to his chest. He is surprisingly strong, and he is growling into Tom’s ear with what seem to be words of endearment – at least, Tom hopes that’s what they are.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Tom says. ‘I don’t speak Greek.’

‘Then speak English! I speak English.’ The man steps back and thumps himself over the heart with his fist. ‘Working on ships, many years. I live in Cardiff.’

‘Cardiff?’ Tom blinks.

‘One year. Tiger Bay. Lovely, lovely. The girls. Aman.’

‘The Welsh …’ Things are getting more surreal by the moment. ‘I have a Welsh aunt,’ Tom stammers. ‘I’m really sorry to burst in on you,’ he hurries on, ‘but I didn’t know where else to go. If I could just …’

The man grabs him again, by the shoulders this time, and gives him a shake. ‘You fight?’ he growls. ‘The Germans? You fight?’