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that clung to the highest wall of the mosque. His linen suit and long crossed legs. My dirty jeans and stained T-shirt, the tips of my fingers smelling of food. I strained to see him as I hurried along the crowded street, scanning the low tables hung with coloured cloth, the assortment of wooden benches. He would order baklava, always four tiny pieces, but we never managed to eat them all. The sweet apple tea, though, we gulped down as if draining each other, satisfying our desire.
    I told Zoi everything then, anything I could think of, all there was to tell: desires, goals, childhood traumas, the burden of my mother’s love. I talked and talked and he merely sat back looking at me without a hint of expression on his face. I stopped mid-sentence.
    â€˜You’re not listening to a word, are you? Or maybe you don’t follow, I’m talking too fast.’
    â€˜No, no. But I do get distracted looking at you. I lose my bearings.’
    I was aware that he only looked at my lips when I spoke, not my eyes.
    â€˜I’d never say any of this if I thought you could understand what I was saying. I’m counting on your lack of English for my confessions. Though at times I feel it’s better than mine.’
    He laughed with me then grew silent, withdrawing from my gaze.
    â€˜Zoi? Are you okay? What have I said?’
    â€˜I understand everything, Mara.’
    We kissed in the shadows away from the street, cautiously, like two people learning from each other to be tender after a lifetime of doubt.
    9
    ATHENS, SUMMER, 2013
    WHENEVER I’M ALONE, Dimitri appears. He comes upon me in the bedroom while I’m brushing my hair. He disturbs me when I sit chewing a pen with my wad of paper, vacant expression on my face. He knows I’m copying out poems then, and I can see it endears me to him, as if I’m entering a high, treacherous territory he’ll never have the courage to scale. Yet he entices me away with sightseeing and beaches and cafés and bars. We’ve found a way of communicating that’s comfortable; he speaks in Greek and I in English. He takes me to secret places and I feel the thrill of pretence, the illicit nature of our appearance together. It makes my eyes bright and my movements languorous, full of the promise of things to come.
    At the Royal Gardens we run hand in hand through sprinklers, under showers of water, spurting liquid, arbours of light. Escaping the relentless traffic and all those frantic people, into the coolness of the park. Flopping down breathless beneath mastic trees, sour scented. I turn to face him. What is it about this boy? He’s a few years younger than me, just out of the gawky phase of adolescence. His face draws me, pulls me in. Those creased eyes, the smooth forehead, that loose mouth. He’s tired; maybe it’s that. All those night shifts in a Kolonaki bar. Or is it sadness? Disillusionment. His face echoes mine in some peculiar, disassociated way.
    I feel the connection behind my eyes in pinpricks of compassion and conscience. He blinks, looks away. But I’m kissing him on the mouth now and somewhere in the dark reaches of my mind I can remember doing this before, in a time far away, with a man that was him and yet not him and my lips know what to do, my hands circle his skull so tightly and while his eyes are creased shut, mine are wide open, I’m tumbling, grasping, falling headlong. I don’t give myself time to think but I repeat it in my head, repeat the phrase, it’s Dimitri, it’s Dimitri, it really is. I allow myself to become excited by the feel of his body, let myself grow loose, without edges, feel my outlines merging into his and yet I also feel the dark thrill of control, the haze of power. His face so close, my nose buried in his cheek, his ear in my mouth, his hands rough on me, his eyes still closed, shutting me out.
    â€˜Stop,’ I say. ‘Look me in the eye, at least.’
    He opens his eyes,