They have almost made it – perhaps they really have made it, though if this is success it doesn’t feel like much. From singing in the Hanoum with Batis and the others, Zoë has moved up slowly but steadily. She left school and took a job as a weaver at the Madras Carpet Factory off Osia Xeni Square in Kokkinia, hard, back-breaking, hand-flaying work, but when Dimitrios Semsis asked her to record a couple of songs, two lovely Smyrna laments she had learnt from Katina Valavani as a little child, the band – Apostoli on the baglamas, Zoë, Pavlo with his bouzouki and Vangeli Karakassis, who plays bad guitar but writes good songs – became popular. Other musicians dropped in to play with them. Batis – who is in the most popular rembetiko outfit, the Famous Quartet of Piraeus, with Markos Vamvakaris, Anestis Delios and Stratos Pagioumtzis – has been their champion. In true Batis fashion, he has been trying to coax Zoë to join the Quartet for years. Why would she, though? Markos is supposed to be the best bouzouki player in Greece, but Zoë knows that Pavlo is ten times the musician Markos is. The big clubs up in Athens are booking them. They have been on the radio. With Semsis recording them, they are going to be bigger than the Quartet soon. Last year, before the Italians invaded, HMV in America had been interested in bringing them to New York. America! The future had suddenly been worth living for. Or would have been. The war has knocked the needle off the record. The Greek Army has surrendered. The British are retreating. They are about to be occupied.

Vangeli leans back and the seat springs creak. ‘Hitler’s coming, no matter what,’ he says. ‘It’s like old Semsis doesn’t want to believe it’s true.’