He peels back a corner of blanket and reveals the instrument’s head, which is shaped like a pointed leaf inlaid with curling mother of pearl tendrils.

‘More! You’re like a pimp with his tart,’ shouts Vangeli.

‘It does look beautiful,’ says Zoë admiringly.

Pavlo wraps his arms around the bouzouki nervously. ‘Let’s … I’ll get her out when we get to Athens. All this bouncing around – it might snap the neck.’

‘Please yourself.’ She sighs, exasperated. But she understands. She saw the look on her brother’s face when his favourite bouzouki was smashed, the night the SS Clan Fraser blew up in Piraeus Harbour. They had been playing in Niko’s club in Karaiskaki, the Cordelio, and the blast threw them all over the room and nearly flattened the place when a huge piece of the ship’s loading boom landed in the alley outside. Half of Piraeus was destroyed, and Pavlo held his broken instrument like a dead child. Aman, she thinks now. There is a kind of beauty in her brother’s soul that not everyone can see.

The car picks up speed. Zoë puts her head out of the window again. The air rushing past her face feels like spring water. She looks ahead; the road, miraculously, is empty all the way to the next looping bend, half a mile in front. They will be in Athens in time for lunch at this rate. But will they be serving lunch today? Everybody is waiting. The city itself, the buildings, the telephone poles with their sagging wires, the sparrows, all waiting for the Germans. People stand in little crowds, silent and still, on the street corners. The only people making any noise are the English and the Australians, who are swarming over what’s left of Piraeus, trying to escape. The people watch them, quietly. Greeks know what disaster feels like. It feels like this.

When she puts her head back inside the car, there is another layer to the heavy tobacco fug. Vangeli has lit his pipe. Tendrils of hash smoke are licking at the windscreen. Apostoli takes a lungful, then the pipe comes back, to Pavlo, who drags on it deeply and lets his head fall back as he passes it to Zoë. When the smoke hits her lungs she waits for the familiar rush and when it comes, she feels a strange sense of relief. At least something is normal.

‘Zoë!’

The pipe is coming round again. Apostoli reaches under his seat and pulls out his baglamas, gives it to Vangeli, who grunts and picks out a chord, thumbs the two drone strings, runs carefully up and down the frets until his fingers slip into a pattern, chopping out chords as harsh and sharp as the edges of a tin can.

‘Inside the bath house in the city …’