‘Thank you,’ he says to McCall. ‘I’m sorry as well.’ He swings first one leg, then the other out of the jeep and walks away, up the first street he comes to. His left leg is in agony but functioning: he is used to its moods and grits his teeth against the familiar pain. Pain like this is nothing. There is a cold wind blowing, rattling the sagging wires above the street. Catching sight of something in a windowless shopfront, he pauses and finds himself, reflected full-length in a cracked cheval glass. His face, distorted slightly by the broken mirror, seems very white and very thin, like something long-underground. He bats feebly at his jacket, raising clouds of plaster dust and revealing the green and brown smears of its camouflage. This is what the war has done to me, he thinks, rubbing his leg, trying to massage some proper life into the badly knitted strands of his flesh. And I’m one of the lucky ones. Christ, I used to be young. I used to be in love.

You’ll never be young again, the ghost in the mirror seems to say, but you’ll always be in love. You made a promise, and there’s no one who can release you from it. You’ll always be in love, now.

He walks faster, his heart almost choking him, rolling on quickly, favouring his bad leg, skirting groups of people who are clearing away rubble. Not far, now. But stepping over a lump of concrete he feels something give way abruptly in his knee and he falls sideways against the iron bars of a shuttered butcher’s shop and has to clutch at them to keep from sliding all the way to the pavement. The pain is much worse. He curses, pulling himself upright, and staggers along, leaning against the wall. But the wall ends, and a side street stretches before him, a chasm. Nothing to lean on. He will have to crawl. And then he feels a presence at his side. An old woman is standing there. Short, wide, dressed in the black headscarf and black dress he has seen so often these past weeks. Her deeply lined face holds a pair of bright hazel eyes. He sees that she has put down a bundle of twigs tied with a piece of string.

‘Where are you going?’ she demands in Greek. Tom can just about understand her. She leans down and touches his leg very gently. Her touch is much more gentle than her harsh voice. ‘Where are you walking to, my darling son?’

Tom tries to smile. ‘Bad leg,’ he says.

‘Very bad!’ the old woman agrees. ‘Where are you going?’

‘The square. Koumoundourou.’