Helen was stunned, painfully aware that her five senses were inadequate to take it all in. They were speeding between the chugging vaporetti now, and in and out of the black high-prowed gondolas. On either side glowed the marble palaces of the Grand Canal. They were as beautiful in reality as in pictures, fine façades with tall windows and bracketed balconies hanging over the curves of the Canal. But she saw now that the real Venice was quite different from the one she had imagined. In her head, she had pictured it as a series of exquisite images, posed, formal, and deserted. But this city was so vibrantly crowded with life that it took her breath away. There were people everywhere, hurrying as in any city, but here they were smiling as they went. There were gaudy shop signs alongside the finest palazzo and heaped stalls of fruit and vegetables, and there were festoons of washing draped from the ancient balconies. And everywhere there was yellow light shining off the rippling water.

Ahead of them a graceful arch spanned the pageant of the Canal.

‘I know,’ Helen smiled at Pansy and Chloe on either side of her. ‘The Rialto Bridge.’

Past the Rialto to the motorboat swung right and into the dense shadows of a narrow rio. The cool dimness made the water opaque olive-green. At once Helen was enclosed by the smell that was forever to mean Venice for her. It was damp moss, cold stone and the mysterious deep whiff of the green water. The outboard slowed, the throb of it thrown to and fro and amplified by the high walls at either side. They slid under a colonnade of arches and stopped at a stone quay where the water slapped and sucked at the piers beneath. The Venetian smell was so intense that Helen felt she could almost reach out and touch it.

She looked up to see an ancient metal sign that read Palazzo Croce.

‘Home,’ Pansy said. ‘Sort of.’

From the private quay she ran up hollowed stone steps within the palazzo towards another arch where brighter light showed in the dimness. The arch gave on to the inner court of the palazzo. Behind her Helen stopped short, letting the arch frame the scene for her.

The walls were lined with creamy marble and a frieze, faded figures in russet and bronze and grey-green, ran round all four sides. There were sightless calm marble heads carved over the windows and the floor of the court was paved in great marble slabs with an intricate mosaic border. The spring afternoon outside was only pleasantly warm, but Helen could imagine how cool and silent this place would be in the blaze of an Italian summer.