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winter. She felt a certain lightness to her spirit with the fine weather and the prospect of seeing her family again. As the train raced through the East Anglian countryside Anna put on her headphones to listen to her iPod. She smiled as she came across the Johnny Cash playlist. Her mother was a big fan and by default that made Anna familiar with the most popular tracks. She listened with delight as the deep, gravelly voice rekindled memories of her childhood spent in the kitchen as her mother cheerfully accompanied her hero while she prepared the evening meal. Like so many families where Greek traditions stuck hard, there was a pride in preparing food rather than reheating ready meals and Anna could almost smell the rich aromas of the family kitchen. Often Eleni had been there too, gossiping with her daughter in a mixture of accented English and native Greek, some of which Anna could follow.
    As she listened to the music, her thoughts returned to the meeting with Dieter and his revelations, which had thrown a small light on her grandmother’s past and inspired Anna to want to know more. It would have to be handled sensitively, she told herself. Eleni was an old woman, a frail woman, though her spirit was strong. Anna did not want to upset her. There was little chance of Eleni agreeing to be interviewed by Dieter, but Anna was keen to discover her story herself. She would decide later how much of it she was prepared to share with the German research student.
    It was nearly midday when she reached Norwich and took a taxi from the station to the road where her mother lived, an avenue lined with semi-detached houses dating back to the nineteen thirties. It was close to the university and many of the houses were owned by academics, or rented by students, who had always made interesting neighbours when Anna had been a teenager going out at nights for the first time. Now she felt a warm sense of remembered belonging as the taxi pulled up outside her mother’s house. She sat for a moment looking up the short path to the front door with its leaded glass panel, small coloured panes arranged in a floral pattern, and smiled. Home. That’s how it felt. Even now, eight years after she had left for university.
    The doorbell still didn’t work and she instinctively reached for the brass knocker and rapped twice. A figure appeared beyond the glass, misshapen, moving quickly. With a metallic rattle the door opened and her mother beamed, then embraced her tightly, kissing her on both cheeks.
    ‘Anna! My dear. So good to see you again.’
    ‘And you, Mum.’ She could only lift one arm to return the embrace as the other hand was holding her overnight bag and, in any case, her arm was pinned to her side.
    ‘Come in, come in out of the cold. I’ll put the kettle on.’
    Anna followed her inside and the door clicked shut behind them. The house had a long entrance hall with a staircase rising to the left. On the other side was a lounge, dining room, and a large kitchen at the rear. The dining room had been given over to Eleni and was her bedroom, on the same floor as the small bathroom beyond the hall and back door at the rear of the kitchen. Anna nodded down the hall and spoke in an undertone.
    ‘How is she?’
    ‘The same as ever.’
    They shared a smile before Anna’s mother took her bag and made for the stairs. ‘Go and say hello. I’ll put this in your room. It’s rented to a student, but she’s away until after the New Year.’
    Although the room had been rented out when Anna had got her teaching job, she still affected a pained expression. ‘It’s only been eight years and already you have replaced me with a stranger. That hurts.’
    ‘Hah! It’s a bedroom, not a shrine, my girl. And I need the income, teacher’s pay being what it is. Now go and see your grandmother.’
    As her mother climbed the stairs, Anna stared after her, noticing there were more grey streaks in the hair tied up in a bun, but her figure was still as