‘Do you remember Connie’s daughter too, by any chance?’ Grace ventured, remembering the words in the diary on VE Day. Connie’s plan was to be reunited with Lara as soon as she and Giovanni were married, so if that had happened then surely she would have lived with them here in Italy. Grace figured Connie and Giovanni might have brought Lara to the shop too, perhaps to choose a birthday present, something special when she turned sixteen or twenty-one.

‘Her daughter?’ Marco repeated, looking uncertain as his forehead creased. ‘No, I never see them with a girl.’ Silence followed as he seemed deep in thought for a while before adding, ‘Please, hold on,’ and handed Ellis’s phone back to him, stood up and said, ‘I’ll be back.’

A few seconds later, and Marco returned with a thick, dusty old ledger and started riffling through the pages.

‘I never see a daughter here in Italy but they did buy a necklace for a child. I remember, because my father … he never make one like it before,’ he said, enthusiastically, his Italian accent getting stronger.

‘Really?’ Grace held her breath as she leaned forward to the ledger as if this somehow brought her closer to Connie and to finding out the truth.

‘Ah, yes. I have it here,’ he tapped the page. ‘A white gold Star of David, diamond tips on each of the star’s six points,’ he read aloud.

‘I remember it!’ Grace said, excitedly. ‘Yes, I saw a necklace with a Star of David pendant in the leather jewellery box. Is there a picture of it on your phone, Ellis?’

They all looked at the phone as Ellis checked.

‘Yes, here we go.’ And he placed the phone on the table so they could all see the screen.

‘Yes, that’s the one,’ Marco confirmed. ‘See here, it matches the description. It was commissioned in 1952.’

‘So it was the same year as the black-and-white picture was taken of Connie by the harbour,’ Grace pointed out to Ellis, ‘and if Lara was born in 1940, then she would have turned twelve in 1952.’

‘Yes, the necklace was a gift to celebrate a girl’s bat mitzvah,’ Marco said. ‘I remember it very well as my father had to work fast through the night to finish making the pendant so Connie and Giovanni could take it with them on the boat to America.’

‘America?’ Grace was flabbergasted. She swivelled in her seat to look at Ellis.

‘Why would they go to America in 1952?’ he asked, creasing his forehead and shaking his head.

‘Because Giovanni was American? A GI, remember? American Italian,’ she said quickly, her mind racing with trying to work it all out. ‘To visit his family there … maybe. It’s the most obvious reason.’