‘Aman! ’ Mama exclaims, and hurriedly spits to ward off the evil eye. Then she chuckles. ‘What a feast! It reminds me of …’ She stops, and shakes her head. ‘I shouldn’t say such things. Do you even remember the old days, koukla?’

‘A little bit.’ Zoë considers. ‘Not very much. I remember our kitchen – the smells, mostly. It was always steamy and smelt like cinnamon and onions and baking. Will our new kitchen smell like that?’

‘Of course!’ Mama has switched to English, as she often does with Zoë. When she found out that the little girl she had found on the waterfront spoke both languages, she decided that she would not forget the language she herself spoke perfectly, with a soft, smoky curl to the words. ‘We’ll have to find the money for the cinnamon. And the onions … And the flour …’ She makes a face and they both laugh. Like everyone they know, the Valavanis live on rice and beans and wild greens, a few eggs, with salt fish on Fridays and sometimes a scrawny chicken or some mutton feet or neck for a stew. ‘What else do you remember?’

‘Well … Oh, you know, Mama. I’ve told you before.’

‘But tell me anyway.’

‘It’s the place with the cliffs.’ Zoë closes her eyes and chases images she no longer really believes in. But it is a familiar memory: a little group of people are standing in front of a cliff that rises behind them. There are trees, thorny bushes. She knows there had been the sound of running water. Bright purple flowers are spiking up out of the brown soil. There is a woman in white, with a big, floppy white hat, and a man in old-fashioned tweeds.

‘Nymph Dagh,’ Mama says. ‘We’d go there every spring for a picnic, just like you. I expect we saw each other there. Isn’t that funny? If I’d waved …’ She takes a sip of her wine. ‘I wonder why I’m thinking like this?’

‘Is it because of the new house?’

Mama looks at her, eyebrows arched. She takes Zoë’s face in her hands and kisses the tip of her nose. ‘You are so clever, darling one. Yes, of course it is. Remembering what we had, and having to be grateful for that little box of a house. But I am grateful. We must be grateful, Zoë. We have nothing, nothing at all, and now we’re going to have …’

‘A box to put it in!’

‘If you were any sharper, Zoë, you’d cut clean through that dress,’ Mama says in Greek, laughing. ‘Except it isn’t nothing, is it?’ She hugs Zoë against her. ‘It’s you, and Pavlo, and me.’

‘It’s us!’