‘Dead.’ Mrs Valavani’s fingers twitch. Zoë sees that she is biting her lip.

‘Occupation?’

Mrs Valavani raises her chin proudly. ‘I sold dresses, mademoiselle. In my shop, Katina Valavani, Maison de Modes et Confections. Rue Boyiadjidika.’

‘Date of birth?’

‘My God … the eighth of August 1890.’

‘And your children?’

‘Pavlo was born on the seventh of June 1917.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Zoë, tell the mademoiselle your birthday. She’s very clever, you know,’ she adds to the French woman.

Zoë stares at the woman’s dress, follows the pale blue lines of flowers up and down. Her birthday? It was … It was … ‘The twenty-second of January,’ she blurts out. ‘1916.’

‘Well done, koukla. Her daddy was so proud of her. You’ve spelt my name wrong,’ she adds, tapping the Frenchwoman’s clipboard.

‘You are to be in Tent … Tent Fifteen,’ the woman tells them. ‘Blankets will be issued.’ She looks down at the two children and wrinkles her nose. ‘Clean clothing. We hope to have bathing facilities ready tomorrow. There will be dinner in an hour. Please go to your tent and do exactly what the officer there tells you.’ She nods briskly to them. ‘Next. You. Name?’

‘Are you six?’ Mrs Valavani asks Zoë as they walk to their tent.

‘Umm hmm.’ Zoë is thinking about food, and bathing.

‘I thought you were older.’ She coughs. ‘That bloody woman. Like a machine. We’re nothing to these people. Nothing.’

‘Is it true? About your shop?’

‘Is it true about your papa and his yacht? His jewellery?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well then, koukla. Yes, I had a shop. It was all real. Remember Xenopoulo? Remember the cafes at Punto? Swimming at the Baths of Daphne? It was life: our lives.’ She squeezes Zoë’s hand almost too tightly. ‘Everything we tell each other will always be true. And these people, these Old Greeks, these peasants, they’ll never believe us. But we have to believe each other. Understand?’

Zoë doesn’t understand. But soon she is pulling on a clean dress, threadbare and clearly someone else’s, but she doesn’t care, because it doesn’t stink of the lavatory. Dinner is like heaven: thick soup full of tripe and calves’ feet. She eats more than she has ever eaten. She will burst, she thinks as she walks back to the tent behind Mrs Valavani. Pavlo is trying to keep up with his mother but he ends up beside Zoë. The camp is lit by strings of bare bulbs strung between poles and trees, and in their yellow light she sees his eyes, round and scared.

‘Don’t you like me?’ she asks.

‘No,’ snaps Pavlo.

‘Oh.’ Zoë shrugs. ‘Are you scared?’

‘No!’

‘I am.’

‘You’re a girl.’ Pavlo almost trips over a piece of marble, and Zoë reaches out and catches his arm. He stares at her hand on his sleeve. ‘Girls are always scared,’ he says, and shakes her hand away. ‘But … I’m scared too.’