Tom is sitting in a doorway watching two medics working on a corporal who has just taken a heavy machine-gun round full in the chest. The rest of the company, strung out along a half-wrecked street just south of Omonia Square, watch in silence. Tom knows it is useless. So do the medics. The other soldiers watch, dragging on cigarettes, their eyes red in their green-and-black-streaked faces. Only a couple of blocks away from what passes for the front line, this is a relatively safe area, and the locals seemed genuinely pleased to see them today: several times, someone – usually an old lady but once a young boy wearing shorts despite the cold wind – ran out into the street with a tray of sliced sweet bread: vasilopita, baked only on New Year’s Day. ‘Xronia polla! ’ people called from their windows and doorways. ‘Kai to xrono! ’

‘What’s that mean?’ one of the soldiers asked.

‘“And next year too,”’ Tom said.

‘Christ, I fucking hope not,’ the soldier muttered.

Later, he chews his little corner of vasilopita and stares at the blank sheet of watercolour paper in his lap. The cake is dry, almost tasteless. He imagines its creation: the flour saved for weeks; an egg bought for God knows how much money, or bartered for; a precious tablespoon of sugar. All this, shared with strangers, foreigners, offered with the same angry love he found in the woman who came out to bandage that soldier. Xronia polla, he tells himself. Many years. The corporal died in the street. An hour or so later, the squad he was following found a couple of young men who tried, too late, to throw away their tin helmets on which ELAS had been crudely painted. They shoved the boys through the shattered window of a dressmaker’s shop and shot them both. Tom painted the dying soldier and then he painted the murdered boys, but he knows that he will never send the last picture back to London.

It is almost dark by the time he gets back to the Fortress. He goes straight to his room and is unlacing his boots when the telephone rings. He didn’t even know it was working. He picks up the receiver and a polite voice tells him the concierge has an urgent message for him. He sighs and makes his way back downstairs. The only person he can think of who knows he is in Athens is Mr Gregory of the WAAC. Probably a query over expenses, he decides, walking into the lobby, where he finds the concierge standing with Chris Dimitriou.

‘Tom,’ Dimitriou says. His sombre face looks more hollow than usual.

‘Evening, Chris.’ He turns to the concierge. ‘I think you have a message for me?’

‘That was me, Tom.’ Dimitriou takes his arm. ‘Come to the bar. I need to buy you a drink.’

‘Oh, yes? Terrific. I need one. Why?’

‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’