‘I’m not going to be blown to bits by the Royal fucking Navy, Collyer,’ McCall says. The jeep has come to a stop in the middle of a crossroads. There is another flap of invisible wings, and both men duck. The explosion is a few yards nearer. ‘But that’s number 209. Let’s go.’ He guns the engine and the jeep hurtles on to the next block.

‘It’s the next corner,’ says Tom. He has just noticed a shuttered cafe that he thinks he remembers.

‘Oh, shit.’ McCall brakes. Tom stands up to see over the dust-caked windscreen. The crossroads ahead is flooded with sunlight and shadows cutting in from the west. Too much light. Tom swings out of the jeep, though it is still crunching slowly over a carpet of broken glass and tiles, and walks forward. The air spirals above him and there is another crash and a fountain of smoke and rubble near the point where the settlement fades into the slope of the mountain. He notices the neat little cupolas of the church for the first time, and further on, the needles of cypress trees marking the cemetery. But where number 317 ought to be, there is nothing but a square patch of burnt earth. Two tiled steps lead up from the narrow pavement into thin air.

In the centre of the scorched ground is a low heap of charred timber, from which a grid, a piece of iron railing, is protruding. Beyond it, a narrow strip of dirt. Chickens once scratched there. In the house beyond, a man and wife lived. Mr and Mrs Castanides. The lattice of iron comes into focus. That blistered paint was cream. His hands gripped those bars as she moved above him. His fingers traced the moulded shells on the bedposts. There was coffee boiling in a copper pot. She turned in the morning light, and let the robe fall from her shoulders. She sang to him. He blinks, and reaches for the flap of his case: in his mind he is already seeing the wet brush dragging black across the paper, blotting it into a flattened square, the lines of the buildings, the perfect blue. Ultramarine. The holy colour. He bought it, didn’t he, to paint the sky above her house.

‘Come on, Tom.’ McCall has his arm around him. Another six-inch shell from the cruiser in the harbour huffs overhead and bursts, shaking the ground. ‘It’s a shitty thing.’ Tom lets himself be steered back to the jeep. ‘But we’ve got to go, old man. OK?’