Back at the hotel, and Grace opened her laptop as Ellis talked to Larry to explain that Connie’s jewels would be collected tonight, having made all the necessary arrangements with the bank. They were sitting at the table on the little balcony overlooking the seafront, the warm, evening sun bathing the palm trees in a glittery, golden sheen.

‘I’ll get some wine and snacks,’ Ellis said, having finished the call, but before Grace could respond, he had jumped up from the table and darted back through the green shuttered doors to his bedroom. She wondered what the rush was … it was as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her. And he had been very quiet on the bus back from Portofino, staring blankly out of the window for the twenty-minute journey along the rugged costal road to right outside the hotel. Then striding ahead, barely waiting for her to catch up as he entered the lift.

Why was he being so distant? They had stood in the lift together and Ellis had barely said two words to her – mostly ‘sure’, ‘great’ and ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to her chitchat about how nice, if bittersweet, it had been to get an insight into Connie’s life from people who actually knew her when she was young and vibrant. And how they had promised to keep in touch with Georgie and Tom, who were also returning to England soon. She could hear Ellis talking on the phone again now, the sound of his voice drifting through the partially open balcony door to his bedroom.

‘Jennifer, hey, babe, I’ll be back tomorrow … yes, I can’t wait to see you too.’ And, unashamedly, Grace leaned across in her seat towards his bedroom door in a bid to hear more. But Ellis must have moved away from the door or indeed gone to get wine and snacks now, as all she could hear was the sound of the cicadas in the foliage below the balcony, mingled with the waves rippling over the pebbles from the beach across the road.

Grace returned her attention to the keyboard on her laptop and opened a folder titled ‘Connie’s Contents’. Scrolling through, she discounted all the diary pages that she had already read and moved on to the miscellaneous letters and papers folder to see if there was anything more left to read that she might have missed. Ah, here we go … She clicked on a photo and saw that it was dated March 1946, so after the war had ended and after Connie and Giovanni had married. The writing in the photo was like a diary entry but had rip marks down one side of the paper, as if it had been torn from the actual diary for that year. She slipped off her sandals, tucked her legs up underneath her and started reading.