She goes outside and sits on the cement step by the kitchen door, watching the Castanides’ two chickens scratch in the dirt. Her fingers trace the lines of the Artillery badge: they know the tiny bronze landscape as well as they know the contours of her own face. The wheel, the crown, the letters that spell UBIQUE. Everywhere. But not here, she thinks. Not here with me now. The little bronze wheel turns. Just a toy. She drops it back into her pocket and goes to Pavlo’s room. There is a slim black case in his suitcase. She opens it. Nestled in black velvet, steel and glass twinkle like strange jewellery: her brother’s spare works. The syringe, a silver teaspoon, a carefully coiled length of rubber. She picks up the single ampoule of colourless liquid. Caught between her finger and thumb it looks so pure, so clean, like a diamond. Or a chink of light shining through from another place. She can slip through to where there isn’t any pain, and no more longing. It will only take a moment. Then she remembers a voice. It comes to her without warning, clearer than a memory. If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy. ‘I’ll stay,’ she says aloud, and drops the ampoule back into the case. Then she takes a deep breath. She needs to find the priest. There is a funeral to be arranged.

Pavlo is buried in the cemetery at the top of Koutasi Street, with the priest from the Church of the Annunciation officiating. It is a proper funeral, too. Pavlo knew a lot of people, far more than Zoë imagined, and they have all chipped in and come up with enough to buy him a coffin of black painted wood, and a ride to his final resting place strapped to the front of a car belonging to a Piraeus municipal engineer. Pavlo lies there at the bottom of his hole, dressed in his best suit and surrounded by flowers. A set of amber komboloi beads hanging from his right hand, a cigarette next to his cheek. His baglamas on his chest. Black lips, black eyes. God, you look dreadful, Zoë thinks. The musicians smoke and scowl, the junkies fidget, Mrs Kodjagas and the other widows of Hozanitas Street dab ostentatiously at their dry eyes. There is one blessing, at least: Feathers has not been seen since the night of Pavlo’s death, so the thing that Zoë has been dreading most, seeing Feathers at the edge of her brother’s grave, does not come to pass. She watches in silence as the men lower the lid of the coffin. Then she begins to sing.

As you go to be with strangers, my love,

Do not be long, because I cannot bear the pain.

Take me too, take me along for company.

Remember me so far away, remember me forever.