It’s been raining, and hailing, and sleeting pretty much non-stop since I arrived here, and because the cottage is built on a steep hill, I can’t really walk anywhere. I can get around the house reasonably well with a stick but I tire very quickly, so I’ve been sitting in an armchair in front of the fireplace, watching damp oak logs smoulder, and listening to my mother’s phonograph. Do you remember, by any chance, my telling you that she has a collection of Indian music? Just a small pile of records that she brought back from India. The one I’ve been listening to the most is by a singer from Hyderabad, I think, called Gauhar Jaan. She reminds me terribly of you. The music is similar to yours but also very different. I can hear the same threads run through both. There’s a quality in her voice, though … When I listened to you singing, it made me imagine that I was standing on the edge of a high cliff, a sheer drop into nothing, but in front of me, in a sky full of stars, was the full moon, so close you could almost reach it, but if you did, the drop … I reached, you know. Gauhar Jaan’s voice has a bit of that in it. Stuck here in this chair, I have nothing to do except pine for you. Music makes it a little more bearable.

I’ve been talking about you rather a lot, I’m afraid. Apparently, when I was stuffed full of morphine and God knows what else, I babbled about you incessantly. My sister insists she caught me speaking Greek, but she has no idea what Greek sounds like, and I can’t speak it anyway, so it can’t have been true. Now I am back to my normal self, whatever that means, I need to talk, and my family are always asking me about everything. ‘Everything’ means the war, but I won’t talk about that. Even if I wanted to dwell on it, which I don’t, I wouldn’t want to inflict anything on them. Perhaps I’m turning into my dad. So I chatter away like a Thomas Cook tourist, a sightseer, and in a way it’s true, because on the face of it I’ve had a cruise-ship itinerary: Suez, Cairo, Alexandria, Athens, Piraeus, Algiers, Palermo. And I talk about you – very discreetly! Tommy’s friend, they call you, which is discreet of them as well. Only my grandfather, Da, has really taken the plunge with me. We were sitting by the fire one night, drinking and watching the flames. He suddenly leant over and slapped me on my (good) leg. ‘Zoë, eh? Means “life”. You’re in love, my boy. Lucky fellow. Lucky fellow.’ You would like Da. He would like you. I think he would get up and dance in the Cordelio if he ever had the chance.