‘I remember seeing it in the jewellery box,’ Grace murmured, wondering why Connie hadn’t kept it with her, if only as a keepsake to remind her of Giovanni. Why had she stored it away? It’s as if she’d packed up her whole life when he died. Sold the villa – hadn’t Tom said his grandmother had bought the pink villa in the Nineties? Grace guessed that this must have been after Giovanni died. Maybe Connie just couldn’t bear the thought of living in it without him. And Grace swallowed hard as she tried to stifle the surge of emotion within her, her own heart aching for the sadness and loss that Connie, the woman she shared a birthday with, had endured in her lifetime.

‘Where is the collection now?’ Marco asked, scrolling some more.

‘In the safe at Cohen’s,’ she assured him, then added, ‘That’s the storage company where I work.’

‘Good, because the whole collection, it worth lots of money. Near a million pounds,’ Marco told them, and Grace caught her breath as she instinctively went into her handbag to find her phone.

‘I had better call Larry and make doubly sure he is locking the safe at all times. You know how he is for leaving it open when he’s topping up the petty cash tin,’ she breathed, panic swirling within her in case something happened to Connie’s jewels.

‘Ha, yes I do. But let’s break the news to him when we leave here,’ Ellis suggested, calmly. ‘Uncle Larry is bound to hyperventilate again as soon as he knows the jewels are worth a million pounds.’

‘I’m guessing then when your friend phoned Larry, he didn’t give him an exact figure … as in pounds – a million of them, to be precise,’ Grace pointed out.

‘Obviously not.’ Ellis pulled a face. ‘But that’s my fault as I asked him not to panic Uncle Larry … I’ll call the London bank where the paintings are stored and make arrangements for the jewels to be taken there too. That way Uncle Larry will only have a few hours or so of being responsible for the jewels before the couriers arrive to collect them.’