The Englishman’s hand is surprisingly strong and rough. When Zoë saw him painting, she thought his long fingers must be delicate, but then she remembers what he has been doing. The paintings of guns being heaved through rivers and out of ditches. The crates and the shells. That pistol. And then his thumb begins to caress the top of her hand, running back and forth, back and forth across the thin bones and veins. Although she senses that there is nothing more to it than a reflex of comfort or anxiety, she finds she is less afraid.

To Tom’s amazement, the voices begin to fade. But they stay where they are, huddled together under the tree. Now that the gendarmes are gone they can hear each other’s breathing, which is shallow and ragged. A large dappled cat with a belly hanging almost to the ground wanders past. Seeing the two of them, the cat stops in its tracks, backs away and hisses, before turning around and, with a certain sagging dignity, trotting off into the dry grass. Tom stands up and helps Zoë to her feet.

‘Are you all right?’ he asks. She nods and lets go of his hand. Tom feels a slide of disappointment. He signals for her to stay where she is, and peers out into the street. It is empty, and so is the cross-street down which the gendarmes have gone. He can still hear them laughing faintly, quite far away.

They carry on walking. The land is rising slightly. The houses are getting even smaller, and the roads are unpaved, just pale strips of compacted, chalky earth. It is a strange place. The tightly packed white houses, each one tiny, ugly, functional but just slightly neo-classical. The white roads. The occasional tree. De Chirico would feel at home here, Tom thinks. Or Delvaux.

‘We are in Kokkinia now,’ Zoë whispers. The responsibility of getting this man to safety is all hers now and it frightens her. At least they are on familiar ground. ‘We are almost there.’

They stop in front of a house with a fading blue door that stands on a corner next to a spindly mimosa tree. It is indistinguishable from the other houses around it: a whitewashed single-storey rectangle with two windows and a shallow hipped roof of Roman tiles. A box, Zoë had said. She wasn’t exaggerating, Tom thinks. Everything seems to be half scale up here. A couple of strides would take him across the street. Zoë takes out the key and unlocks the door. She walks in and Tom follows.