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the top class monitors put them every day at dinnertime.
    Makis never knew if Mrs Young saw him go past her classroom – he didn’t look to find out. Instead, he walked with a purpose: to get those Colour Spot books safely out of the school. To start teaching his mother how to read English.

Chapter Six
    Makis thought hard about the way he was learning to speak English, the fact that he was with a lot of English children all day. Words rubbed off on him like the lichen off a tree trunk. It had started on the ship coming over. While his mother and the other grown-ups stayed in their quarters, he had wandered the decks and the corridors. He’d grown friendly with the crew members, who taught him things like ‘Hello!’ and ‘See you!’ and ‘Get your backside out of it!’ At first, in the school playground, the most usual phrase he’d heard was ‘Clear off!’ And in the classroom, when a teacher was pleased, it was ‘Good!’ or ‘Excellent!’ Listening to people and talking to them was the important thing.
    So that was how he would start with his mother. Instead of talking Greek to her all the time, he would sometimes say things in English, so that at least she could hear the words being spoken. That hadn’t been happening at home, or at
Daphne Dresses
with the other Greek and Cypriot women. Then, after a bit, he would start reading the books with her, and point out to her things in the street: signs, notices, advertisements. Some of these were the same advertisements that had been on walls in Argostoli, so straight off, he’d known what
Persil washes whiter
meant. It probably washed whiter all over the world.
    But an idea came to him as he walked into the living-room and saw the mandolin – a brilliant idea. At Imeson Street they sang a song: ’Ten Green Bottles’. He could pick that out on the strings. What made it a useful song to sing with his mother were the numbers in it – which he could use his fingers to show. And that afternoon, as he walked into the living-room with the Colour Spot readers under his coat, he felt proud of his idea. His mother had saved his father’s mandolin. Now he would use it to start saving her.
    She was in the kitchen washing the floor. The floor was never dirty. Only two rubs each way with the wet cloth and it was covered, and Makis knew it would have been washed once already that afternoon; but she had to keep finding herself something to do. In Alekata there would have been a hundred things keeping her busy: making goats’ milk into cheese, knocking nails into split fish boxes, netting olives, knocking down walnuts. Each afternoon, when Makis got in from school, she would smile, pour him juice or cold water and offer olives and cake before getting on with her work. But always, she would smile.
    Not like today, when she hardly looked up, but sent suds scudding across the stone floor.
    â€˜Hello, Mama,’ Makis said, in English.
    â€˜Hello, Makis,’ she replied in Greek.
    â€˜Say hello in English,’ he said.
    â€˜Uh?’
    â€˜Say “hello”.’ He made a handshaking gesture. ‘Hello.’
    She looked at him as if he was mad, and with a
tchk
, she turned back to the popping soapsuds.
    â€˜Hello… Goodbye…’ Although she wasn’t looking at him, Makis made the handshaking gesture again, and he waved goodbye, before adding in Greek, ‘I’m only speaking English tonight.’
    But his mother shrugged over her wet cloth, as if to say, ‘What silliness is this?’
    â€˜I’ll make you laugh,’ he said. ‘Laugh. Ha-ha!’ – although he now had his doubts whether even miming falling off a wall ten times like the green bottles would raise a smile on his mother’s face. He kissed the top of her head and went back into the living-room.
    The mandolin was hanging on the wall like a decoration. Sofia Makis had removed a