‘Right-o,’ says the lieutenant. This has happened before: a report of dead civilians, soldiers sent to confirm, and to gather anything that might identify the dead. Directions are given, and the platoon leaves the tank and turns up a street of small, crumbling houses, moving slowly, watching for snipers. Next to a tiny church is an abandoned garage. A metal door at the far end opens onto a small square of waste ground, once a paved courtyard formed by a high wall and two other houses, long since overgrown with weeds and littered thickly with oil cans, food tins, lamb and chicken bones. Against the far wall, a line of bodies, heads twisted at horrible angles against the plaster, faces already beginning to turn black. Men, a couple of teenagers, an older man in overalls, and the stockinged legs of a woman wearing a dark skirt and jacket. His mouth goes dry. There’s no reason to think … he starts to reassure himself, but since Hozanitas Street there has been a shadow where his certainties had once been. He forces himself to go and look. The woman lies on her side, her face almost hidden by the jacket of the man next to her. Permed hair, a sharp chin, the bruise-dark skin taking the first deep lines of middle age. Thank God. Thank God! He turns away and automatically reaches for his painting kit. He squats in a corner of the yard, painting the soldiers at their grim task of searching the bodies. How surreal it is, he thinks. I’ve come through the war to find this at the end of it all: a ruined city and a ruined people. For the last few days he has been wondering whether he is witnessing a beginning here in Greece, not an ending: that a new world is being born. He blows on the painting and stares over at the dead. Did he really think that poor dead woman was Zoë? Surely not. But he did. His heart is still thumping with relief.

That evening he is trying to read the London newspaper in the Fortress Bar, but the effort of sorting the depressing news from the cheerful filler is too tiresome, so he is sparring half-heartedly with the crossword when he hears someone call his name. Walking through the door to the bar is George Seferis. Delighted, Tom jumps to his feet, arm raised, when he sees another man following the poet, a wiry figure in an army officer’s service dress uniform. His cap badge says Intelligence Corps. Dark brows, a falcon-like nose, narrow chin, curly black hair parted and combed back severely. A black, sweeping moustache.

‘Mr Seferis!’ Tom shouts. ‘And my God! Chris Dimitriou!’

‘I have been wondering when we would meet again,’ Seferis says, shaking Tom’s hand warmly. ‘And I take it you know this fellow already?’