‘Yes. A great time.’ He didn’t expand any more than that and stayed staring out of the window. Grace, not wanting anything to spoil their last whole day here, decided not to question him further, and so instead settled back in the worn leather seat and focused on admiring the view as the driver set off. She was grateful to be on the sea-view side of the car and stared, mesmerised, at the magnificence of the rugged, rocky shoreline as the taxi zipped along the costal road, imagining herself to be Audrey Hepburn in the Galaxy chocolate advert with ‘Moon River’ playing in the background. With the timeless, pastel-coloured houses coming into view and the lack of the commercial petrol stations, Costa coffee outlets and suchlike that were on every corner in London, Grace was able to imagine being back in the Fifties and to experience the view just as Connie had done when she had travelled in the open-top car to Portofino and then on to San Fruttuoso, which she wrote so beautifully about in her diary.

On arriving in Portofino, Grace stepped out of the taxi and was delighted when the driver told them they weren’t far from the main piazzetta square, just a short walk away in fact, and where the bustle of the shops and cafés were beside the water’s edge.

‘Shall we head to the harbour first?’ Grace said, keen to see if she could find the spot where Connie had been standing in the photo that had fallen out of the back of her diary. The one where she couldn’t be sure if Connie was feeling sad or shy.

Grace had scanned it and was now searching on her mobile to find it. ‘Here it is.’ She turned her screen towards Ellis.

‘Cool. Let’s do that and I can take a picture of you in the same spot,’ he smiled, and Grace’s spirits lifted on seeing that he seemed to have perked up. He had most likely just been feeling as fragile as she had in the taxi. She couldn’t expect him to be upbeat for every second of the time they were here together. They were just two … She paused her thoughts to wonder what exactly they were, before settling on ‘friends’, then swiftly changing it to ‘colleagues’, after all, who had kind of been put together.