My eldest sister Phrosso said it was awful, awful – mouldy Alexandria – if only they would let her wear high heels, or take us to Europe, if only she could have a passionate love affair; otherwise, she was going to burst. But it did not occur to me that our life was by any means insufferable. Though I was different. I was the sensible one, said the aunts; Dionysios is a steady boy. Sometimes I felt this bitterly, but I could not alter, and almost always I derived an immense pleasure from the continuous activity of the house: my second sister Agni writing essays at the oval table; the two little ones giving way to tempers; the maids explaining dreams in the attics; and at evening our Aunt Thalia playing the piano in the big salon with the gilded mirrors – her interpretation of Schumann was not equalled by that of Frau Klara herself, Fräulein Hoffmann said, not that she had been there. Our aunt was very satisfied. She crossed her wrists more than ever. She sang une petite chanson spirituelle de votre Duparc to please Mademoiselle Leblanc, who sat and smiled above her darning-egg. I believe we were at our happiest in the evenings of those days. Though somebody might open a door, threatening to dash the light from the candles on our aunt’s piano, the flames soon recovered their shape. Silences were silenter. In those days, it was not uncommon to hear the sound of a camel, treading past, through the dust. There was the smell of camel on the evening air.

Oh yes, we were at our happiest. If my sister Phrosso said it was all awful, awful, it was because she had caught sight of the Italian athlete at the beach, and life had become painful for her.

That was the year Stavrides came to live in the house almost opposite.

‘Do you know,’ I informed Aunt Ourania, ’these Stavrides are from Smyrna? Eurydice heard it from their cook.’

‘Yes, I know,’ our aunt replied rather gravely. ‘But I do not care for little boys, Dionysi mou, to spend so much time in the kitchen.’

It hurt me when our aunt spoke like this, because more than any of us I was hers. But I always pretended not to have heard.

‘Did you know them?’ I had to ask. ‘These Stavrides, Aunt Ourania?’

‘I cannot say I did not know them,’ Aunt Ourania now replied. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I knew them.’

It seemed to me that Aunt Ourania was looking her sternest, but as always on such a transformation, she began to fiddle with my tunic, to stroke my hair.

‘Then, shall we know them, too, Aunt Ourania? There is one child, Eurydice says. A little girl. Titina.’

But our Aunt Ourania grew sterner still.

‘I have not decided,’ she said at last, ‘how far we shall commit ourselves. The Stavrides,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘are not altogether desirable.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it is difficult to put.’