Pavlo rolls his eyes sympathetically. ‘I know, I know,’ he says, his voice heavy with apology. ‘But since Drapetsona got bombed, the poor thing has been drifting around the city. We can’t just leave her on the street.’ God, he is so charming, Zoë thinks. But we? ‘I thought she was quite at home on the streets,’ she says icily.

‘Yes, exactly, the poor little doll,’ says Pavlo, as if he hasn’t understood, but he has, Zoë knows. He’s understood perfectly well.

‘She will pay rent,’ she says firmly.

‘She’s my guest!’ Pavlo raises his hands in perfectly acted horror. Then his shoulders slump. ‘Listen, Zozo, I know you don’t like Feathers—’

‘Don’t like?’ Zoë hisses. ‘Don’t like?’

‘I can’t let her die, Zozo. She’d be on my conscience for ever. It’s my fault she’s like this.’

‘What?’ Zoë exclaims so loudly that Mr Castanides’ face appears in his window. She forces a smile and a wave, and he waves back. ‘It’s your fault?’ she says, barely in control of herself. ‘She got you back on the needle after you got clean, and she’s kept you on it ever since! She’s a … a vampire!’

‘You don’t know her, Zozo,’ says Pavlo sadly.

‘Thank Christ!’ Zoë growls in frustration: how can Pavlo really believe what he is saying? ‘Well, that’s that, then,’ she says, and storms back into the kitchen, where she surprises Feathers, who is sitting in her chair and leafing through Vogue.

‘I can’t read this,’ says Feathers, peevishly. Zoë snatches it away from her.

‘That’s right, you bloody can’t,’ she says, and runs into the front room where she sits, her whole being throbbing with anger. But there is nothing she can do. She listens to Pavlo and Feathers talking in the kitchen, Feathers’ grating voice that always seems to be flapping between suspicion and protested innocence. I’ll move out, she decides. The band is getting a lot of bookings from the posh clubs on Ermou Street in the centre of Athens. Their pay, hundreds of millions of drachmas per night, is enough for small necessities: a pint of olive oil here, some rice, a loaf of bread. Apostoli and his wife have a room to rent. She lights a black-market cigarette and considers. Yes, that’s what she’ll do. She’ll move out.

The next day, Zoë is sitting on Venetia Kodjagas’s step, chatting with the old lady in the summer sunshine. ‘How could your brother bring that whore into your home?’ Mrs Kodjagas is saying. ‘How you must suffer.’