‘Mr Poulatoglou the vegetable seller comes to the corner every Tuesday at exactly eight o’clock. He is like our clock. But I think it is past eight. I must find my watch.’ She gets out of bed and rummages naked through the clothes on the floor. ‘Aha. It is … Holy Mother. Almost nine!’

‘Are you expecting anybody?’ Tom asks as he buttons up his trousers.

‘Expecting? No, but this is Kokkinia. People come, if they are expected or not.’ She has ransacked a drawer for underwear and is sitting on the edge of the bed in a pale blue slip, rolling on her stockings. ‘Anyway, I’m sure Apostoli will be thinking about what to do with you, and Niko, and this soldier, this Yiorgos. Holy Virgin, and Sólon! And of course, the neighbours …’

‘Yes, I meant to ask about your neighbours. Because they’ll see me, eventually, if I nip out to use the lavatory. Are they likely to report you?’

‘No, they won’t. Mr Castanides is a communist. The government locked him up two years ago and he only got out after Christmas. His wife is an infernal gossip, but her son was wounded fighting the Germans last month – he is in hospital in Salonika. Since then, she has gone mad against the Axis. I don’t think they will say anything. Actually, I’m sure they will help us if we need it.’ She laughs, rather bitterly. ‘They have always suspected me of having lovers, but an English officer trying to escape – this they will approve of.’

‘I’m an English officer on the run and your lover,’ he reminds her gently. She stands up and peers through the shutters and he thinks he must have said the wrong thing – it has always been bound to happen – but she comes back and kisses him hard.

‘My lover,’ she says, as if trying out the words. ‘Mmm. My lover.’

‘I’ve fallen in love with you, Zoë,’ Tom says before he can stop himself. Damn, he thinks. I’m such an idiot. But—

‘Of course,’ she says softly. ‘We have fallen in love. This is what has happened.’

‘So … what are we going to do?’ Tom feels a not unpleasant sensation of weightlessness. The world has shrunk down to the two of them again, and everything else is just space. ‘Now, I mean. Because now I don’t want to leave you.’

She sits beside him, buttoning up her blouse. ‘And I don’t want you to go. When we were lying here just now I was thinking that if you were Greek … if only you were Greek, you could stay.’

‘Do you think I could pretend? You could teach me.’

‘You, my darling Tom, could not be less Greek,’ she says sadly. ‘But you wouldn’t stay anyway.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’

‘You have your duty. You have your – what is it – your battery. Your men.’