Zoë sucked her finger for a while, looking at the fish darting below the rainbow film of oil on the surface of the water. If she said it aloud, would it be true? ‘I think …’ She knew she must tell this woman, this stranger, the truth, but as she tried, she had began to cry instead. Rocking on her nest of rope, she pointed straight down into the sea. ‘Mama too,’ she managed, at last.

‘Mercy,’ the woman sighed. She used the same word, aman, which Zoë had just been singing. ‘You’re all on your own.’ Zoë said nothing. What was there to say? She just fingered her label and wondered whether she was going to cry again, and how long it was until the foreign ladies in the funny uniforms started dishing out their thin, salty soup. Then she noticed that standing behind the woman’s legs was a little boy about her age, with wavy dark hair and very black, piercing eyes. He was staring at her the whole time, so she made a face at him. He scowled back, and tugged at the woman’s skirt.

‘Mama! I’m hungry!’

‘We’re all hungry, Pavlo,’ she said, patting him on the head. ‘Shush, my love.’ Then she squatted down on her haunches beside Zoë. ‘Sing it again, koukla. Eh? It makes things better, to sing.’

Zoë pursed her lips. ‘All right.’ And she folded her hands across her chest and started.

A black stone on the beach, my Lula, my Xanthoula,

A black stone on the beach, my Lula, my Xanthoula.

The woman joined in. ‘I will make a pillow there … Och, too sad, little golden-hair. You have a lovely voice.’

‘So do you.’ Zoë was surprised at herself. She hadn’t liked this stranger at first, but it was true, she had a good voice, deep and husky. When she had sung the amans, her voice had sobbed up and down the scale, just like the lady singers at Cafe Trieste.

‘Mama!’ The little boy started to wrench furiously at her skirt.

‘All right, Pavlo, little devil! We’ll find something.’ She stood up, looked around her, and Zoë saw that her face had taken on the half frightened, half vacant look that all the grown-ups in the crowd seemed to have. She patted Zoë absently on the head and, before Zoë could say anything, she wandered off into the mass of people, the boy stamping along behind her.