Niko thinks it will be too dangerous for Zoë to go home today. ‘You can’t go up to Kokkinia,’ he tells her. ‘Christ knows what’s going on.’ Micho has come in with the news that the Germans have hoisted a gigantic swastika flag over the Acropolis. A couple more regulars appear. Zoë can’t believe how grateful she is for the presence of others, for the sound of their voices. By midday, the cafe is filling up. Zoë is full of nervous energy, so intense that it hurts if she keeps still. When she finally goes out, a short trip around the corner to Prokopiou’s for pastries, she is shocked to find how normal everything is. People are out and about. Though she had expected to find the streets filled with German soldiers, there is no one in uniform at all, not even a gendarme. The bakery is full of people buying baklava, kataifi, squares of custard pie, all made from looted British supplies. People are expectant rather than fearful. She hears men telling each other that the Germans respect them for giving the Italians such a hiding, that Hitler worships the ancient heroes of Greece. Perhaps it won’t be all bad for us this time, they say. Their voices, though: their voices betray them. Everyone seems to be listening for something, as if they can hear the alien flag snapping in the wind, up on the Acropolis.

In the end she does go home. The buses aren’t running so she has to walk to the far end of Kokkinia. The shops she passes are almost empty, their shelves stripped. Prokopiou’s is the exception, not the rule. It will all get back to normal, she tells herself, but she knows it isn’t true.

As she walks through the narrow, rutted streets, she wonders if anything will really change. Life, surely, can’t get much worse. A flight of bombers, the first she has heard all day, appear from the north, but they are very high, going elsewhere. She looks south towards the horizon. That’s the world, out there, she thinks. Here, it’s become somewhere else.

The house on Hozanitas Street welcomes her as it always does, all four walls rattling slightly as she opens the flimsy door. She walks straight in, expecting it to be empty, but instead she finds her brother and his girlfriend Feathers sprawled on the bench-like sofa in the front room.

‘Pavlo!’ Zoë shrieks, slamming the door, which makes a sound like a book being snapped shut, and stumbling across the floor to kneel in front of him. She grabs his hands, which as always are cool and dry. ‘When did you get back?’ she demands. ‘How are you? What happened?’