‘I mean, it’s hard to be an artist,’ Tom goes on. The chair is uncomfortable and rickety but it would have been rude to take up the only comfortable seating. ‘You don’t like the way you sing when it’s caught on record. I don’t like my ideas when I put them onto canvas or paper. I like my pictures when I’m making them, but the moment I step away, I think: that’s not what I intended at all.’

‘I am not an artist,’ Zoë says. She considers the sofa but thinks it might be more polite to take the other hard chair.

‘You are,’ Tom says seriously. ‘When I was listening to you tonight …’

‘… you were high on Pavlo’s black Brusa hashish.’

‘Admittedly. But I’m pretty sure it’s worn off now,’ Tom says. It seems to be true. His mind has stopped sending him down lush paths of overgrown thoughts. ‘I was listening, and it was very beautiful, hashish or no hashish. Now I’m thinking: if only I could paint like she sings.’

‘You are very nice.’ She gets up and goes into the kitchen. In the little curtained-off alcove beneath the basin she finds a bottle of decent tsipouro, a third full. We’ll have a drink and then he can go to bed, she thinks. I like listening to him talk. I like our conversation. Anyway, I have a duty.

‘What’s this?’ he asks as she pours an inch of clear liquid into a pair of small cafe glasses.

‘Tsipouro,’ she says, and holds up her glass. ‘Cheers.’

‘Yassass! ’ He takes a hearty sip. The stuff is strong and almost tasteless, like schnapps, but there is a subtle aftertaste. ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘It’s good. It tastes like the Greek mountains.’

‘Really?’ She puts her head a little to one side.

‘It tastes like the smell of the mountains.’ He laughs. ‘I’m not making sense. I didn’t smell much in the mountains except burning lorries, but this was what I wanted it to smell like.’

‘How sad!’

‘Sad. Pointless.’ He takes another sip.

‘How long have you been a soldier?’

‘Oh, months. They threw me in at the deep end. Can I tell you something?’

‘Please.’

‘I wasn’t going to be a soldier at all. I was going to become a conscientious objector. Do you know what that is?’ She shakes her head. ‘Someone who refuses to fight on moral grounds. When I was at art school we all thought war was against everything that humanity should represent.’

‘But sometimes it is proper to fight!’