‘You never got married, Zoë.’ Mrs Kodjagas turns her lined face up to Zoë’s. ‘If you had been married …’

‘My husband would have died in the famine, or in Osia Xeni Square.’

‘Oh, dear.’

‘Well, isn’t it true? Why else do all the refugee women wear black? Mama taught me that. The whole neighbourhood did: that you give your heart to someone else and they leave you wearing black.’

‘There was the English boy.’

‘Do you remember him, Kyria Venetia? Because I don’t think I do.’

‘Really?’ The old woman squeezes Zoë’s wrist, just a ghost of pressure.

‘All right. I do remember him. But I’m afraid he died a long time ago. So many battles. So many ways to die. Sometimes I think that the British Army will come into Athens and I’ll see him riding on a tank. He’ll jump down and then … you know, Kyria Venetia. These are our dreams, aren’t they? Our Kokkinia dreams.’

‘You still think of him?’

‘Always.’

Mrs Kodjagas sighs and pats Zoë’s arm. ‘You’re very like your mother. Gloomy but so passionate. She would agree with me, you know.’ They both turn and glance at where the bedstead rises from the debris like the door of a vanished cage. ‘She’d tell you, like I have: something will turn up.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

It is nearly two months, because the anti-malarial drugs gave him jaundice, before Tom can make the calm, dull crossing from Taranto to Piraeus. The Mediterranean is safe now, the last U-boat long since sunk. He has hitched a ride on a tank landing ship full of armoured cars. There is fighting in Athens: the provisional Greek government, all those argumentative, balding men he drew in Cava de’ Tirreni, have failed after all. On 2nd October they ordered EAM-ELAS to disarm, the next day there was a demonstration and the police opened fire. After that, ELAS attacked the police stations and the monarchist bases, and British troops were drawn in. Now, in Athens, there is civil war.

They round Cape Matapan before dawn. Tom is awake, staring out into the darkness to port, feeling his blood shifting with excitement. He has been waiting for this for so long. The sun rises as they come up the east coast of the Peloponnese, past Hydra and Poros and the mountains of the Argolid, carrying a roof of heavy grey cloud. They clear the island of Aegina and there, in the distance, a white haze resolving from stacked shades of greys and blues: the city. Athens. It is 19th December 1944.