‘Listen. Efi says there are some in ELAS. And the British have medics. The British are here in Psiri. I’ll find a patrol. I speak English, remember? I’ll be back soon.’ She picks up the Italian gas mask bag she has been using as a handbag and slings it over her shoulder. It holds her identification papers and ration card, an almost empty powder compact and some cigarettes.

‘What if you’re killed? I don’t know what I’ll do.’ Apostoli looks up at her, his face twisted with emotion.

‘If I die, remember what I told you. About my family. Can you remember?’

‘I … What was it?’ he mutters. ‘You’ll have to tell me again.’

Zoë bends down and kisses the bald spot on the top of his head, brushes the back of her hand across Andromache’s stringy hair. Then she turns and hurries out of the room. Going down to the ground floor is like diving into a sunken ship. The windows are boarded up and everything is shrouded in dust and lumps of plaster shaken loose by explosions. She crouches behind the front door, listening. The screaming has stopped and the gunfire seems to have shifted to the next street or perhaps further away. There is a white flag, a large square of sheet tacked to a broom handle, next to the door. Andromache made it to wave on her dashes to the standpipe, to show that she is neutral, but Zoë has never been quite sure if it makes her more or less safe. She has been shot at a couple of times while carrying it: neither ELAS or the X approve of neutrality, let alone surrender. She takes it anyway as she unlocks the door and peers out, waving the flag in front of her, wincing in expectation of the crack of a bullet.

But the street is empty. Cartridges are scattered over the pavement, and a wide brush stroke of red shows where a body – the screaming one? – has been dragged away. She steels herself, then steps out. She turns left and runs towards the corner. The tank was down there, she reasons. There must be British soldiers nearby. The square of fraying linen flaps above her. When she reaches the corner, she sees a couple of civilians edging from doorway to doorway, but no soldiers. This street leads, in one direction, to Ermou, which in turn leads straight to Syntagma Square. Ermou is a battlefield, though, and its straightness and length make it a place of lethal crossfires. She decides to cut through the narrower streets, still heading east towards Syntagma. Which means, she realises, that she is turning her back on ELAS, on Efi and Sólon, if they are even still alive. So I’m going to the English, she thinks. At last. I suppose that makes me a quisling. But ELAS won’t save Andromache. They’ve gone mad, like the X, like the government.