‘I’m sure they have somewhere like Xenopoulo. It’s a very lovely city,’ Mama is saying. She takes a deep breath and the girl senses that she is not quite sure. ‘We shall buy a house in … I don’t know, perhaps Kolonaki. And then I am going to take you to Paris, and London. My goodness! What fun we’re going to have!’ Mama’s voice sounds as if she is making a face, though she is still smiling in the dirty red light, staring back towards Papa at the wheel. The girl wonders if the garnet necklace – the woman hadn’t bought it – is somewhere on Thetis, in one of the big, heavy boxes the men on the dock at Cordelio had carried on board. They had been angry, and Papa had given them a lot of money before they had done what he asked. There are so many boxes – from the shop and from the house – that the cabin is full. But it makes her feel safer to know that all those precious things are here with her. She looks back at Papa and waves. He grins and sweeps off his neat white cap and waves it at her. She laughs, delighted, but then the line of glowing red in the distance pulses and she snuggles closer to Mama.

‘It looks like a monster,’ she says. ‘Maybe a giant … a giant’s mouth.’

‘Then don’t look, dearest. Go to sleep. And when you wake up, there won’t be any giant.’

‘Papa? When will we get there?’ the girl calls out, her voice muffled by the thick air. But he grins and pats the varnished wheel.

‘We’ll be in Piraeus in time for tea, little Zoë. I promise.’

The yacht slides on. Long before dawn, she is still awake, shivering under a blanket, when she hears a voice: a woman, crying. Then the soft plash of oars, far away through the drifting smoke. The voice comes a little closer and the girl hears that it isn’t sobbing but singing. She stares out towards the sound but there is nothing to be seen. Just the voice, and its song.

A person must give some thought to the hour of his death;

when he will go down into the black earth

and his name will be erased.