Inside, Evangelos strikes a match and lights an old oil lamp. The yellow light fills a square, rough-walled room, empty except for two crude, narrow plank beds, the oil lamp and a large tin chamber pot. Small enough so that the beds take up most of the floor, it smells of damp whitewash and mice. An empty rice sack is nailed across both tiny windows. ‘A palace, isn’t it?’ Kosti says in a low voice. ‘We need to talk quietly: the walls are like rice paper. But you’ll be safe. No one on this street is going to turn you in.’

‘Is this your house?’ Zoë goes over to the window in the far wall and lifts the curtain. She looks out on a deep, stony ditch, more of a ravine, down which a runnel of dark liquid glints unpleasantly in the moonlight.

‘I grew up here,’ Kosti is saying. ‘It belonged to my aunt and uncle. Now it’s mine, I suppose, because they both died in the famine. My parents died when I was ten.’ He looks around. ‘There were six of us in here … But don’t worry, comrades. It’s empty now. One of our safe houses. All yours. The two of you won’t know what to do with yourselves in all this space.’ He chuckles grimly and the two women join in despite their lingering fear. There is something familiar here after all: the humour of refugees. Kosti has taken a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread and a greasy paper package from his bag.

‘I’ll leave this for you,’ he says. ‘Do you have any money?’

Zoë hesitates, but what is the point? ‘A little,’ she says.

‘Good. Petrakis – his shop is up by the church – will give you fair prices for food. He’s a good comrade. Where are you from?’

‘Smyrna. I was born there. So was Efi.’

‘Me, I’m from Tsanakkale up the coast,’ Kosti says proudly. ‘This one’ – he nudges Evangelos – ‘is a Vlach. From Psychiko, no less.’

Efi whistles. ‘That’s more posh than Kolonaki.’

‘We’re all Greeks,’ says Evangelos. ‘All comrades. Are you with us, sisters?’

‘With you?’ Zoë mouths, suspiciously.

‘EAM.’

‘Yes,’ Efi says.

Evangelos turns to Zoë. ‘What about you?’

‘No, I’m not in EAM.’

‘Why not?’ Evangelos folds his arms and frowns.

‘I’m a singer,’ says Zoë. She sticks her hands in her pockets to hide her unease and her knuckles bump against Tom Collyer’s badge. ‘What good would I be to you?’

‘The struggle …’

‘I’ve been fighting since I was six years old, little one,’ Zoë says, feeling suddenly ancient. ‘Twenty-two years. I still don’t know what victory looks like.’