‘He turned overbearing, controlling, none of the things he had been when we were courting. He wouldn’t let me see my friends. He said they were offensive, though before he had spent nearly every day in their company. And his business –’ she laughed, tears wetting her eyelashes, loosened by the gin ‘– I had never asked much, you see, before the wedding. I knew he owned factories that made parts. I thought the details too dull to bother with.’ She drank. ‘But then the conferences began, the dinners, and I saw the sorts of people who attended, I heard them talk, discussing armaments and weaponry as if they were sweets.’

She looked at me. ‘A British wife with government connections is a useful thing in the arms trade. That’s how he saw me, a tool in his negotiations. I couldn’t stand it. Finally, I told him I was leaving.’ She drained the glass. ‘He disagreed. He tricked me into going to our country house, in the middle of nowhere, and locked me up there until he was sure I was with child.’

She held her hand out for the box of cigarettes on the dresser, and I handed them to her, helped her light one. ‘He thought that would stop me, you see,’ she said. ‘He was wrong. One night he left me alone, and I ran. I caught a train to the nearest town and I fixed the little problem he had given me. You can do that, you know, with enough money, even in places like Italy.’

Her hand was trembling as she took a drag on the cigarette.

‘Then I did exactly the same as you. I got out of the country. I knew he’d never agree to a divorce, and that I wouldn’t be safe, once he discovered what I’d done.’

‘Where did you go?’ I asked it quietly.

‘France,’ she said, ignoring the cigarette ash that fell on to the sheets. ‘Back to the Riviera. I had friends there. I thought about going home to England, but I was scared my family might intervene, send me back to Francesco. So I floated between Antibes and Nice, keeping as quiet as I could. That’s where I met Arthur, a year ago, at the Beau Rivage.’

There was something in the way she said it, softly, quite different from the terrible matter-of-fact way she’d discussed her marriage.

‘Were you and he …?’ I felt my cheeks burn. Had he looked at her, the way he looked at me, in the shadows of the lounge? I shifted on the bed, trying to seem casual. It was no use. She knew.