Zoë shudders, trying not to think of her own daddy being shot or killed with bayonets. But then she sees him at the bottom of the sea, on the white sand, next to Mama. They are just bones now – she knows that, but this is how she thinks of them: laid out in the dappled, dancing light, with fishes weaving silver ropes around them. She closes her eyes and listens to Mama Katina, who is coming to the end of her song. Mama’s voice trembles, drops down to a deep sob, a word that sounds as if her heart has flown out of her mouth. Zoë knows, suddenly, exactly what Mama is feeling: she is away from this world, somewhere on the roads that lead back to the sunshine before the catastrophe, and then, always, to the dead.

‘What about Marika?’ Zoë asks Mrs Bakas, who shuts her eyes and lifts her hands dramatically. Zoë waits for more horror but suddenly there is a shout and a chittering of children’s voices from nearby. Recognising her brother’s voice, Zoë turns around just in time to see Pavlo twisting in the grasp of a hefty boy with a head the shape of a potato adorned with brush-cut sandy hair. He is wearing a suit of grey cloth and, Zoë notes automatically with the instincts of the shanty town child, proper shoes. A Vlach, then: a local Greek. He has the shoulder of Pavlo’s jacket in one meaty fist. With the other hand he is pointing towards the wine barrels and yelling something at the man in the army shirt. The man cups his hand to his ear, and the boy fills his chest to shout again. This is the moment that Pavlo chooses to kick him hard, right between the legs.

‘Pavlo!’ she shrieks at him, horrified but also admiring: it was a lovely move. He is already off, running towards the fringes of the new streets, which swallow him up in an instant. He may be a dreamer, thinks Zoë, but my brother can still look after himself. ‘Who’s that boy, please?’ she asks Mrs Bakas, who glances over.

‘Po po po,’ she exclaims. ‘What happened to him, the poor little puppy? Och, wait; it’s him, the little shit! He’s bound to have deserved it. Don’t you know? That’s Sólon. His father is the gendarme over there.’ She nods towards the younger policeman. ‘Corporal Pandelis isn’t a bad sort, for a Vlach. But his sons are little swine, both of them. I shouldn’t say such things, but …’ As Zoë knows quite well that Mrs Bakas runs a small but definitely illegal drinking den in her house, she reckons that the woman’s opinion is to be respected. ‘Sólon pushes people about,’ Mrs Bakas goes on, ‘and his brother likes to look through keyholes. They’ll be gendarmes too, soon enough. And then, watch out.’