‘Connie. Portofino harbour. 1952,’ he read aloud and then commented, ‘very nice indeed.’ He passed the picture to Grace who slid it back where it belonged inside the diary.

‘But why hasn’t anyone been in contact? There must be someone – who took this photo? And who wrote Connie’s name on the back? A family member? Mr Donato? Connie’s child?’ Grace was sure Connie had a daughter as she had seen mention of a baby in one of the letters she’d found in the first suitcase. And then there was the pink fluffy teddy bear. It was tucked inside a bundle of delicately hand-knitted baby clothes – a pretty matinee jacket, a bonnet with satin ribbons and bootees in soft pink and white wool. And all of a sudden a wave of sadness came over her, for she knew that Connie was dead. In her heart she just knew. It was the most likely reason for her storage payments to have stopped, it was usually the way, and she couldn’t bear the thought of the unit being sold at auction to whoever was willing to stump up the highest bid, as had happened on rare occasions when all avenues to trace the owner or a relative had been exhausted.

Grace felt it important to make sure it didn’t happen this time; that a complete stranger should rummage through Connie’s things with scant regard to the life that she had lived. She wasn’t really sure why she felt so strongly about it. Maybe it was seeing the photo; it had somehow made Connie real, and now Grace cared about her. Or maybe it was the pair of worn-out pink satin pointe ballet shoes that she had found in a black leather oval-shaped dancing case underneath the chaise longue. Was Connie a dancer too? Was that where the feeling of affinity came from?

Whatever it was, Grace knew that she had to find out more about the elusive Mrs Donato with her sad eyes. And who knew, maybe Grace’s intuition was wrong and Connie was still alive: it was possible. Perhaps she had returned to Italy and was living the high life in her powder pink villa on the hillside and just didn’t give a damn about a load of old stuff deposited back in London, having long ago forgotten about its existence. Or perhaps she was old and senile and didn’t even remember the contents of her storage unit. Maybe someone else was managing her finances and had simply forgotten, or didn’t even know they were supposed to send cheques to pay for a storage unit in London.