I will pretend she is my young sister, if that is what it takes to have her close to me without the taint of illegitimacy. I know that Mother has grown very fond of her, and Lara, likewise. I see the bond between them every time I visit the village of Tindledale, and it breaks my heart to know that Lara views me as a doting sister rather than her proper mother. But in time that will change and Giovanni and I will become a family with Lara at the heart of it, with us, here in London, for Giovanni wishes to love Lara as his own and has no desire to return to America and to his disapproving parents. We have that in common, you see, except his downfall – as far as his family is concerned – is his love for art and not for the law; his lawyer father owns a firm in Manhattan in New York, and always envisaged Giovanni would follow in his footsteps. But Giovanni has no desire to practise law and he really is a very talented artist, for I have seen some of his pencil drawings and they are terrific.

‘Bingo!’ Grace clapped her hands together and then swivelled the screen of her laptop around so that Ellis, who was sitting opposite her, could take a look at the page of Connie’s diary entry dated 1945. ‘See this paragraph right here …’ She tapped the screen after jumping up and dashing round to stand next to him.

They had just got back to the townhouse and were sitting around a red metal table on the small balcony off the sitting room, admiring the view, boats and gondolas drifting along the canal, an elderly Venetian woman pegging her washing out on a little line looped between two flower boxes beneath her windows, a baker further along offloading trays of bread and scrumptious-looking cakes from a boat and into the back of a café. Grace was mesmerised by the ordinary, day-to-day life of the people who lived here, and was grateful that they weren’t staying in one of the touristy areas where she might have missed it all. They had also enjoyed lunch in a traditional Venetian cicchetti bar, serving wine known as ombra with small tapas-style plates of meatballs, fried squid, boiled eggs and sardines, with herby tomato stacked bruschetta and slices of bread with baccalà, a creamy cod topping that had tasted delicious. Sitting on high stools at the bar alongside native Italians all chatting enthusiastically and using their hands to articulate, Grace had loved the buzzy, frenetic yet friendly atmosphere. It made her feel alive and like she was properly a part of life once more.