‘Jolly well done!’ says the doctor. ‘Best way to do it.’ He shows Mummy how to make a sling out of an old pillow case, and Tom is left tucked up in bed, his left arm splinted against his chest, dizzy with pain but beginning to feel the subtle warmth of vindication. After she has seen Dr Henderson off, Mummy comes back and Tom tells her all about Vulcan.

‘Do I have to stay in bed for a long time?’ he asks, when he is finished and Mummy is frowning.

‘Only a few days,’ she says, brightening. ‘We’ll have such fun, I promise. Daddy has to go up to London anyway, on business.’

‘What can I do with one arm?’

‘Hmm. You can draw. We can draw together. I’m horribly out of practice. Lucky for you, you’re right-handed.’

That night, Tom wakes up to hear china smashing downstairs, Mummy’s high voice and Daddy’s clipped growl bashing against each other. They only stop when the baby starts to cry. The next day, Daddy leaves early for his business trip, and Mummy brings him breakfast in bed. On the tray is a box of brand-new German pencils.

‘I’ve been saving these for an emergency,’ she says. ‘Do you think this is one of those?’

‘Mummy, why is Daddy so angry all the time? With me?’

Mummy sighs. She slides a pencil out of the box and rolls it between her fingers. The sun, at last, is shining through the window and it glints off the band of gold at the end. ‘It’s … it’s because of the War, darling. That’s all. Nothing to do with you. Don’t take any notice.’

‘You notice.’

‘I’m supposed to.’

‘Is that what mummies do?’

Mummy smiles, a little sadly. ‘Yes. Among other things. Now, what shall you draw?’

CHAPTER FIVE

Piraeus, Greece, 1927

‘Is this it?’ Pavlo is looking dubiously at a roofless box made from three panels of thick plasterboard. Another panel is propped up alongside. The box is about as long as a carriage on the Athens Metro, and perhaps twice as wide. It stands on one corner of a crossroads, the intersection of two rough tracks across a farmer’s field. Other buildings in various states of construction – some just foundations of rubble, others almost finished, glorified sheds with half-tiled roofs, stand closely packed and stretching away in all directions. Behind the field, the ground begins to rise steeply towards the rocky slope of a low mountain. Wrapped around the mountain’s feet, a dingy patchwork of fields has already been half swallowed by a grid of streets lined with more tiny, close-packed houses. Less than a mile away to the south is Piraeus Harbour.