‘Morning, morning.’ He pushes his cap back from his damp forehead. ‘You couldn’t give us a hand, could you? We have a few wounded.’

‘Is that an order?’ Efi says, spikily, but Kosti just grins.

‘I’m as bad at giving orders as I am at taking them,’ he says. ‘No, but if you aren’t doing anything else …’

Efi sighs. ‘Wait. I’ll get my bag.’ Efi ducks inside the hut.

‘You know, I’ve heard you sing a few times,’ Kosti says to Zoë. ‘Before the war. It was the right thing to say – what you told little Evangelaki. Should be good enough for anybody, to be a singer. And your brother is Pavlo Valavani, right? What’s he doing now?’

‘He died,’ says Zoë, and turns away.

‘Damn. I’m sorry.’ He crosses himself. ‘That mangas could really play.’

At that moment Efi reappears, the German medic’s kit over her shoulder. ‘I promise I’ll look after her,’ says Kosti.

‘She can look after herself,’ says Zoë, and hugs her friend tightly. She watches them run back through the billowing curtains of laundry and vanish in the direction of the smoke.

Zoë waits all day for Efi to come back. A couple of women come to the hut with a piece of fresh bread and some cheese. They are both from near Smyrna. The fighting, they tell her, is over a block of flats taken over by a unit of the Special Security. ‘But in broad daylight?’ Zoë asks, amazed. ‘What about the Germans?’

‘The Germans have given up,’ they say.

It is true. Efi comes back to the hut early next morning, her pretty, round face rosy with excitement. It is the twelfth of October.

‘It’s over, Zozo! They’re going! They’re really going!’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Zoë has been preparing to be angry with Efi since yesterday evening, when she didn’t come home. ‘So you’re not dead?’

‘Of course I’m not! And it’s really true! They’re leaving Athens right now. Come with me!’

She drags Zoë out into early morning streets already swarming with people. Everyone seems to have a blue and white flag. They fall in with a squad of partisans all wearing ELAS caps and armbands. They carry their weapons quite openly: German and Italian rifles and machine guns, bandoliers packed with ammunition. Kosti pushes through the crowd and hugs them both. Zoë sees Evangelos with a can of paint, splashing a huge ‘EAM’ onto the side of a church.

‘Where are the Battalionists?’ Zoë asks warily. The air still smells of cordite and burning petrol.

‘If they’ve got any sense they’ll be halfway to Berlin, the shits,’ he says. ‘Don’t worry so much! Don’t you get it, my sister? We’re in charge now. We’ve won!’