Zoë takes the bus back to Kokkinia, getting off late so she doesn’t have to walk through Osia Xeni Square. The street she walks up is the street she came down all those years ago, on her way to find Pavlo in the teké in Karaiskaki after Mama’s funeral. She felt more alone then than she had ever thought possible but today is worse. She is as alone now as she was on the dock at Piraeus when they tied a label to her little sailor suit. She is floating in the empty sea, and there is no bowsprit to catch on to.

In the house, she lights the gas ring – there is gas, today – and makes a briki of German ersatz coffee. She has drunk two cups before she remembers the letter. After Dimitri left, she slipped it into her bag, intending to read it at Apostoli’s house, but she didn’t dare light a lamp in case she woke her hosts, and in the morning she was in too much of a hurry to leave. The envelope is there, a neat oblong of expensive yellow parchment paper. She finds a knife and slits it open, carefully. Inside, a neatly folded letter.

My dearest sister,

I am so sorry but I cannot live in this way any longer. I have tried to keep going but I find it more and more impossible. If you are reading this and saying to yourself that I have been hiding my state from you then I am glad, because that was my intention. I’m afraid I have been coming to this point since the dreadful winter of our hunger. My nerves are completely destroyed, and every day is a new torture. I cannot find the music the way I used to be able to find it. My fingers are not working properly and I do not hear the roads in my head. People will start to notice if they have not already and I am horribly afraid of that.