There is a small German outpost up Grevenon Street, near the church, and someone is mending one of the Opel trucks, revving it again and again, sending exhaust fumes billowing up. There hasn’t been a drop of petrol available to most Greeks since the occupation began, and still the mechanic revs away. It is a nice day, but the streets are almost empty. Emaciated figures plod here and there. There are beggars on the corners but before the winter there were many more. Last April, the place would have been bustling away to its usual rhythms, but the only rhythm now is wake, sleep, wake. And when that breaks, the horse and cart. The cats who should be sunning themselves are long gone, trapped and butchered, sold as rabbit when people cared enough to be squeamish, as cat meat when they ceased to care.

In the taverna on the corner, two gaunt men are sipping cups of acorn coffee for which they have paid several thousand drachmas, and playing backgammon. Money is meaningless. Zoë’s stomach contracts agonisingly and she has to stop and lean against a telephone pole. It has taken her an hour longer to walk here than she planned. She rested in a doorway somewhere in Korydallós and the sun felt so warm that she let her eyelids droop, and only opened them again when something jabbed her hard in the side. A woman was standing there, raising her umbrella for another poke. She gave a start when Zoë’s eyes had opened.

‘What are you doing there?’ the woman demanded. ‘I thought you were a corpse! Get up, for God’s sake. If you let yourself fall asleep like that, you’ll be finished!’ She sounded furious, but put out her hand to help Zoë up. ‘There, there, pretty one. Keep walking, wherever you are going. Don’t stop.’

She leans against the pole, watching the men sip their coffee. She can taste it, bitter as earth, but she’d like some, even so. Pushing herself away from the pole, she totters across the rutted street and towards her house. She can see it, and the stump of the mimosa tree, long since cut down for fuel. No longer feeling the ground beneath her blistered feet, she makes it as far as the front step, and she sinks down onto it with a sense of infinite gratitude. She clasps her handbag to her breasts – Where have my breasts gone? she thinks. They used to be nice. Tom loved them. He loved me. When we lay in bed and the air smelt of coffee, sweet coffee …