I sighed again, then gave in again. ‘Dromo, have you heard about the huge volcanic explosion in Campania? Have you heard about the great fire in Rome later that same year?’

He had. Everyone knew about Vesuvius, and though an infant at the time, Dromo had been in Rome during the fire, safe up on the Aventine, which escaped the inferno. Since I had been drinking, today I lost my usual reserve. I told Dromo what had happened in our family that year, and how it changed me.

My father had a favourite nephew, Larius, a talented fresco painter, who worked at Stabiae on the Bay of Neapolis. He lived there on and off; despite a few wild episodes, he had a local wife and a family. When Mount Vesuvius so catastrophically erupted, he was the kind of fixated artist who would have tried to finish his wall, even though the whole house where he was painting faced violent destruction. As soon as we heard about the eruption, my father went to see if he could find Larius, though he never did. Falco spent weeks there, in anguish as he tried to dig down through twenty feet of mud or ash. He could never find any trace. We decided the whole little family must have tried to escape too late; Larius was killed, along with many other people, most of whom were never found.

Shortly afterwards, a huge fire in Rome destroyed many monuments, including the Saepta Julia, a gorgeous two-storey gallery where we had a family antiques business. Father worked there with another nephew, Gaius, who had always seemed a tricky, fly-by-night character, though the ragamuffin had a heart of gold. When the fire came tearing through the district, Gaius became a hero; he refused to run and save himself but stayed to help other people. The roof collapsed while he was still in there. The firefighters never recovered his body.

‘So we lost both brothers, but that did not mean nobody cared. Dromo, when I saw how desperately my father struggled to find Larius, how he raged over his helplessness, how long he kept up the search, and then when I saw how distraught everyone was over losing Gaius, I found some faith. I was able to believe that when I was a lost baby, I had that same degree of love. I no longer hated my parents for abandoning me; I stopped feeling bitter. I saw I was fortunate to have been saved, and eventually to be rescued a second time by the fine people who are my family in Rome.’

‘Will Myla’s baby think she is fortunate?’

Dear gods, I doubted that. ‘I hope so, but who knows?’