‘Flatterer.’ She looked at him, half smiling, only the whites of her eyes revealing how nervous she was. ‘You must hate watching reality TV. There’s a compulsory ohmygod every ten seconds.’

‘I don’t watch television,’ he said truthfully.

‘I’m starting to love your weirdness. Especially in that hat.’

Her dry, throwaway humour took a bit of getting used to, the effusiveness undercut with sarcasm. The word ‘love’ lingered, although it shouldn’t have.

They were at the far side of the village where ugly bungalows with incongruous names like Little Nooks and La Cabana hid, squat and double-glazed, behind laurel hedges.

‘It’s on the left here. That’s Mack’s motorbike, so he’s here.’ He could almost hear her pulses spike straight to three figures. ‘Go past the house a bit. Park up there on the left.’

Luca stopped the car out of sight from the large, neat white bungalow, the Italian rust bucket tucked against its garden’s freshly trimmed holly hedge. Above them, a To Let sign was holding firm in the wind. Pax had found a hairband in a pocket and was scraping her hair up into it.

In the rear-view mirror, he could see the yellow of a wasp-waisted sports’ bike snarling alongside a very clean Honda Jazz on a neatly raked gravel drive. ‘That’s some horsepower.’

‘Mack’s Christmas present to himself. Probably why he wasn’t interested in a puppy.’

‘Don’t tell me – Mack is short for Middle-Aged Crisis?’

She double-took, a rare laugh breaking cover. ‘A dog’s for life, not mid-life.’ She pulled the door open, cold air snapping in, lifting the petrol receipts in the central caddy so they flew round the car like spells. And as she glanced back over her shoulder, the magic of the car’s closed intimacy, the good humour, seemed to swirl around them and then just as quickly it was sucked outside.

‘I have to talk to Mack about schools. I’ll try to be quick.’

He glanced at the dash clock.

‘You need to be back at the stud, I know. It’s crazy you chauffeuring me here like this.’ Slam. Magic over.

Luca cursed under his breath. Having just bared his soul, he was now sitting in a rusty car like a transvestite getaway driver, and she was still making him feel like an annoying stranger.

Be kind to her. Ronnie’s voice was again in his head.

Ronnie hadn’t asked for this, he reminded himself. This was Luca O’Brien doing what he always did, completely over-playing it.

His phone rang. Expecting a call back from an Italian cousin, desperate for the music of another language, he answered it without looking. ‘Pronto, Matteo.’

‘Luca, this is Mishaal.’

He wouldn’t have recognised the voice. Deeper. Less domineering, more in control.

‘Mishaal.’ He drew his jaw up, swallowing slowly. ‘How y’doing?’

‘You are in England, my father tells me.’

‘That’s right.’

‘As am I. We will meet.’

His manner of speaking hadn’t changed. Far more businesslike than his flamboyant father, Mishaal had always possessed a robotic quality. It made him difficult to read.