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poor lads’ heads – now what sort of a terrible mind thinks up a thing like that?’
    ‘I noticed something of the sort as we drove in,’ said Clara, remembering she had been worrying about the girls and hadn’t asked Hal what they were for. She’d rather not know, she decided.
    ‘Another drink?’ said Mrs Burroughs, and led Clara away from the bar towards a group of women at a card table, playing whist.
    ‘You must join our reading group at the club. It’s terribly good fun, and we often read plays aloud – do you enjoy the theatre at all? We were thinking of starting a dramatic society…’

    Later they were driven home by Kirby through a very black night, stopping for the gates to be opened by soldiers, who peered in at them, saluted and waved them through. The headlights picked out the barbed wire that was looped on the tops of fences or stretched tight between posts.
    Away from the base the road felt lonely; Clara was glad to see buildings ahead of them as they came into Limassol. There was almost no street lighting, and nobody about, just the dark houses and alleyways between them.
    ‘I’m sorry I was so grumpy earlier,’ she said.
    ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Hal. He put his arm around her. ‘You’ll see the girls in a moment.’
    ‘I’m sure they’re fine.’
    ‘I’m going to be kept pretty busy,’ he said. ‘Do you remember the blokes in Krefeld, shooting up wrecked old cars just for something to do?’
    ‘This will be better.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said firmly.
    He was happy.
    In Germany Hal had distinguished himself, been promoted to captain and served six years after that without having seen a shot fired in anger and it had been hard to take the inactivity. Even with his joy in having Clara at last, after their long engagement, he had been frustrated. His main challenge was keeping his men up to the mark and occupied, and Clara had come to understand that it was not blood-lust that was being thwarted in Hal, but something cleaner than that, and natural. He’d been trained to do a job; he should have liked to do it.
    The car stopped. Kirby got out, opened the door for them and looked up and down the street, short-fingered hands resting loosely on his Sten gun, as they let themselves into the house.

    The Greek girl was sitting on a chair in the kitchen. She stood up and smiled. Hal took out his wallet and Clara went straight upstairs to the back bedroom and pushed open the door.
    A candle was burning on the tilting chest of drawers.
    Lottie was asleep on the bed and the cot was empty. After a very short moment of terror Clara saw that Meg was in the single bed, too, in the shadow behind the heaped-up blankets. She went to the bed and sat down. The twins were jumbled together in sleep. She felt their faces, as she had when they were smaller. She always told herself there was no need to do it, but still, whenever they slept, she checked to make sure they were breathing.
    She picked up the candle and went to the top of the stairs. ‘Where’s the girl?’ she said.
    ‘She’s gone.’
    ‘She left a candle in the room.’ Clara heard her voice shaking. ‘It’s very dangerous. They’re not babies now, they might have pushed it over. Will you tell her next time?’
    ‘We won’t use her next time.’
    After a moment, she said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get used to everything.’
    Hal came up the stairs. He blew out the candle and, in the sudden blackness, kissed her. ‘I’m not worried,’ he said.

Chapter Three
    Even up in the hills, the walls of the village houses were covered with graffiti. Some of it was in poorly spelled English, although any schoolboy could have read the Greek: ‘ BRITISH OUT. EOKA. ELEFTHERIA I THANATOS – freedom or death. ENOSIS – union with Greece .’
    The trucks crawled as the road got steeper. The engines whined, and sometimes the tyres skidded where the roads were still running water from the heavy rain. The villages were built onto the sides of the steep