And Zoë forces herself believe it, as they march into Athens, into Syntagma Square, and run over to Ippokratous Street to watch the German convoys rolling out of the city in perfect order, each truck moving at exact speed, full of neat, expressionless soldiers. After all the terror and misery, the day feels like one of the American cartoons she sometimes went to see at the Cineac Theatre, because the Germans, through a flaw in their inscrutable logic, didn’t object to Mickey Mouse. Watching the Germans leave has that flat, jerky, too-bright quality of a cartoon. The Greek flags are so thick that the street looks like a carpet of forget-me-nots, but the crowd lining the street is completely silent. The only sound is the chug of the Opel trucks as they edge their way out of history.

And then they dance. All of Athens dances. Somehow Zoë finds Apostoli and Niko in a cafe on Ermou Street and they sing every song they can remember, standing arm in arm in front of the university and later on at some fancy hotel where some Nazi general’s wine cellar has been liberated. Oh, it is wonderful. But somehow, it is too bright, too flat. She has to force herself to believe, but it feels like a cartoon. When she saw the swastika flying from the Acropolis that day in 1941, it felt terrifyingly real. Liberation feels like Mickey Mouse.

She spends that night on Apostoli’s sofa in Psiri. ‘I’m going home,’ she decides next morning, as Andromache is heating up the coffee: German ersatz, but the real stuff will be back soon now that there is peace again. Peace. Walking through Psiri, she realises how much she has missed Kokkinia these past few days. There are worse places than Psiri, she tells herself, but the quarter is the kind of place where weeds grow sideways out of the crumbling stucco of the houses and people don’t know their neighbours. Still, everything feels more real today. The city is coming back to life. There is a sense of buoyancy, almost as if the Germans had been affecting the force of gravity. Even the tired October air, as she waits for the tram in Omonia Square, tastes like champagne. Two days ago the trams weren’t even running to Piraeus because of the fighting. Now the Battalionists and the Special Security units have melted away or turned themselves in to the police. Prime Minister Rallis has been arrested. British paratroops have landed and are driving towards Athens. The government in exile is sailing from Taranto. People are reading the newspapers and finding things that make them smile. She hasn’t seen such a thing in years. When she gets home she will stand in the close silence and tell Mama everything that has happened. At least I have my ghosts, she thinks, and then her hand touches the cap badge in her pocket.