Outside on the street I can hear children playing in the late-evening sunlight, just as we did. Parents are calling them in, but they’re pleading to stay out a little longer. I remember not wanting the day to end until the sun finally went to bed. I know, too, that teenagers will be in the square, hanging around the bocce pitch. And Nonno will tut at the rubbish they leave when he goes there to play. I remember being one of those teenagers and not wanting our evening to end. Especially not when I had a boyfriend. I wanted it to go on and on, and in some ways it did, for years. But that seems a lifetime ago. And the older groups of young people will be gathering in the cafés around the square, drinking coffee and talking until the heat has gone from the day. I remember wanting to be a bilingual businesswoman, spending my time between here and London, the best of both worlds. That was when I thought anything was possible. Before I discovered it wasn’t.

‘He’s at the restaurant,’ Nonna says, putting the big pan away, ready for it to come out in the morning. Everything in its place, as it always has been. The pans hanging by the big oven. The chipped jug beside it with wooden spoons and ladles.

‘At the restaurant? What’s he doing there?’ I stop eating, fork held in mid-air, tagliatelle and sauce dripping from it.

‘He had a few customers tonight. He didn’t want to let them down. Old customers.’ She looks up at the clock on the wall and I can see she’s worrying.

‘Eat, eat,’ she tells me, patting my shoulder.

I put my fork into my mouth, chew and swallow. ‘But surely he shouldn’t be working. He’s only been out of hospital for a week or so.’

She shrugs. ‘But you know what Nonno is like. That restaurant is his lifeblood. He hates to shut it. Besides, he is doing much better. Even playing bocce again!’

‘Bocce!’ I can see him now, with the same group of friends he’s been playing with for as long as I can remember. Under the big olive tree in the square, with the metal bench under it, in front of the entrance to the narrow cobbled street where the restaurant is. A big round sign, ‘Pizzeria Nonno’, hangs out from the old stone wall over the metal gates leading into the restaurant courtyard. He likes playing bocce in the town square so he can keep an eye on his domain just down the street.

‘Have they agreed which rules to play by yet?’ I ask, still smiling.

‘No,’ says Nonna matter-of-factly. ‘I don’t think they ever will!’

I scoop up another mouthful. ‘I’ll go down to the restaurant and help him finish up,’ I say.

Nonna stops what she’s doing, a little misty-eyed.

‘Nonna, are you okay?’