‘She likes you. She calls you her sister-in-law. Did you know that?’ He chuckles wanly. ‘But I … I need her, Zoë. Don’t ask me to explain. I need the music. I need the junk. And I need Feathers. If I don’t have them, I just …’ He flutters his fingers. His eyelids are drooping again. ‘I just fly away in every direction.’

‘Christ, Pavlo.’ She kneels and grabs his hands again. ‘Are you OK, really?’

‘Fine. Fine. Australians. Gave me a lift. They’ve all gone. Think they’ll leave us alone?’

‘Who?’ says Zoë, confused.

‘The Germans.’

‘I hope so. But they won’t. They’ve put their flag up on the Acropolis.’ She looks up, and sees that his head has rolled against Feathers’ washed-out curls. He looks like a saint, she thinks, a dead saint. She kisses his fingers gently. Then she goes into Mama’s old bedroom, takes down the silver-framed icon of Saint Polycarp and puts it in her bag. In the lavatory, the loose brick behind which she keeps a roll of banknotes is undisturbed. She pads to the door and stands for a moment, listening to the heavy breaths of the sleeping couple. Then she leaves.

At first she just walks but her feet and her sadness take her up to the cemetery. Mama Katina no longer has a grave but her children pay, every year, for her bones to rest inside the communal ossuary. So that is where Zoë goes. The cemetery seems unusually busy: she is not the only one who has felt compelled to come and talk to the dead. People are everywhere: couples walking arm in arm, carrying flowers; old men; old widows wrapped in black. It is the first place in the city today that has a feeling of purpose in the air. We’ve all come to a place we understand, Zoë realises, resting her forehead against the marble wall of the ossuary. ‘Hello, Mama,’ she says. ‘It’s happening again, I’m afraid to say. Everything’s going to hell. But don’t worry. Pavlo and I will be fine. You taught us very well, my dearest little mother. I’ll never, ever forget you.’