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do with education reforms,’ muttered the waiter in answer to Dimitra’s question, as he scattered her change into a metal saucer on her table.
    Irini felt slightly uncomfortable sitting here in this bourgeois café. She too was a student, like the people outside, but the divide seemed immense.
    Dimitra noticed her expression change and realised that her goddaughter’s attention had drifted away.
    ‘What is it?’ she said with concern. ‘You mustn’t worry about these demonstrations. I know they don’t happen in Kilkis but they’re a day-to-day occurrence here. These students are always taking to the streets, protesting about something or other.’
    She gave a dismissive wave with her hand and Irini felt agulf open up between herself and her elegant godmother. It seemed wrong to belittle whatever it was that the people outside clearly felt strongly about, but she did not want to argue.
    It took fifteen minutes for the protesters to pass, by which time their second coffees were finished and it was time to leave.
    ‘It was so lovely to see you – and thank you for my flowers!’ said Dimitra. ‘Let’s meet up again soon. And, don’t worry about those students. Just keep your distance.’
    As she leaned forward to kiss her, Irini breathed in her godmother’s expensive scent. It was like being enveloped in a cashmere blanket. The elegant sixty year old hastened across the road and turned to wave.
    ‘ Yassou agapi mou! Goodbye, my dear,’ she called out.
    Irini glanced to her right and saw the tail end of the march still making its way slowly towards the government building, the chanting little more than a low humming now. For a moment she was tempted to follow but this was not the right time and instead she turned left up the empty street. Traffic diversions would continue for another ten minutes so she took the chance to walk down the middle of the road, placing her feet carefully along the white lines. Lights still turned from red to green, but for a few moments she was all alone in this wide avenue, completely and unexpectedly free.
    Several times that week, her classes were half empty as students took time off to go out into the streets. It seemed strange to her, in their first term of university, to waste all these lectures, but it was obvious to Irini when she first stepped inside thefoyer that the politics on the street were as important to most of the students as anything they might learn inside the faculty building. Thousands of identical red and black propaganda flyers were posted on the wall, their endlessly repeated message almost lost in an hypnotic pattern.
    ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ some of them asked her.
    As far as Irini’s father was concerned there was only one political party, only one view of the world, and to take sides against it, even in an argument around the dining table, took more courage than she would ever have. Communists were detested, anarchists despised. This was the view she had no courage to question, so when a huge group of her fellow students went off regularly and cheerfully with their makeshift banners, she could not join them. For them it was a way of life, passing through the graffiti-daubed corridors where even the walls joined in the protest.
    There were many days and nights, though, when marches and politics were forgotten and every student, whatever their views, ate, drank, danced and looked for love.
    That Friday night, in a bar in the Exarchia district, Irini caught sight of a pair of pale green eyes. The low light accentuated their pallor. She smiled. It was impossible not to. A perfect face such as this made the world a better place.
    He smiled back.
    ‘Drink?’ he gestured. The volume of noisy conversation in the bar was almost deafening. Irini and her friends joined his group and introductions were made. The boy’s name was Fotis.
    The evening passed, with bottles gradually forming a glass forest on the table and smoke curling closely around