Demetra lives in Kaisariani, on a comparatively quiet street. When Claire climbs out of the car she feels particles of dust break over her in a wave and enter her body, closing her throat. She bends double with one hand on the warm side panel. There are dark tracks in the dust on the road. The inhaler’s in her hand and this time she needs it. Click and breathe – click and breathe. The tracks are from Demetra’s tyres. They must have driven through water on their way.

The apartment is on the third floor above a pharmacy. Demetra leads her in silence down the dark hall into the living room and closes the living room door. ‘Yiannis is sleeping,’ she says. ‘I know. I know. But I can’t deal with him. It’s better this way.’ When they laugh they laugh with their hands across their mouths.

Hotel Oceanis. The name means nothing. She looked it up on Wikipedia. No matches: nothing spelled that way. There was a Titan called Oceanus, whom Zeus folded into the earth along with all the rest. Oceanus had daughters, the Oceanids – Sibelius wrote some music about them. The name could be a corruption of that. But she thinks it was specious. She thinks it was meant to sound good, to sound Greek. To reassure the tourists that they were in the right place.

*

She wakes in Demetra’s sister’s room, under a cliff of trinket-laden shelves, to the sound of women’s voices. In the kitchen, Demetra says, ‘Claire, this is my mother. Tell her chronia pola – many years. It’s her name day. Saint Sofia’s day.’ Claire says it. Somehow the words sound right. ‘Brava!’ cries Sofia, who has stopped by with a brown paper bag full of bread from church. The bread is good luck. Claire takes a piece. It’s sour and yeasty, breaking apart before it even touches her mouth. Then Sofia presses a postcard into her hands: Saint Sofia in a bright green gown, the patron of wisdom, standing tall behind her three daughters: Pistis, Elpis, Agape.

It is comforting to sit on the balcony and listen to them chatter in words she doesn’t understand. It is comforting to watch the acacia leaves, greyish-green, piled like clouds, and the balconies they cover, balconies like this one, tiny private boxes hung above the street. After a while she lets her eyes drop to the pavement where citizens walk. She studies their faces. Not him … Not him …

Demetra drives her out to Piraeus. They stop across the road from gate 62. There is a central reservation full of red dianthus past its best, then the massive wire fence and the fortified gate, and beyond that a world of concrete: huge ramps, many levels, realms of parking, all pearly grey, and the ghosts of ships in the distance that look too large to float.