The open-air tables had just been put out for the season in front of the cafés, but they were not yet packed with tourists. The Venetians were still in possession of their city and they sat idly over coffee cups and talk. At Quadri’s there was a violinist walking between the tables playing a sad little melody that hung in the warm, scented air.

Helen sank into her chair and stared about her, stunned.

The others were laughing at her and she was suddenly swept by a wave of love for them both, and happiness that they were there to share this magical evening with her.

Pansy had ordered ice-creams and they came in fluted glasses, five different flavours.

Helen waved her spoon. ‘I feel,’ she said, ‘as if all my birthdays have come at once. What more could anyone ask? Friends, and Venice, and ice-creams like this.’

‘Many happy returns,’ they answered.

In spite of her fears, Helen was allowed plenty of time to learn the moods of her new love. Sometimes with Chloe, more usually alone, she went out in the blue-grey morning fight and let herself drift along the narrow streets, pausing every so often to hang over one of the high bridges and stare into the water. She had begun methodically, with guide-books and lists of sights to see, but gradually she abandoned herself to unplanned wandering. Her rewards were the discovery of an exquisite altarpiece in a dusty, deserted church, or a sudden perfect vista of a narrow street with a single fruit stall and a child playing unconcernedly beside it. She saw the Tintorettos and the Tiepolos and all the great architectural masterpieces, but it was her own private finds that gave her the most pleasure. Sometimes she was out for the whole day, stopping to buy fruit from one of the stalls in the erberia and to drink coffee in shabby cafés among strangers.

She came to know the look of the city in every hour from dawn to dark, and as she learned about it she went further afield, riding the vaporetti to Murano and Torcello, and the ferryboats out to the Lido where she wandered among the fashionable rich and enjoyed the contrast with the variegated crowds of the real Venice.

Helen found that the thoughtless idling among so much haphazard beauty affected her strangely. She was overtaken by a dreamy sensuality stronger than anything she had felt since her early days with Oliver. Darcy was often in her mind. His quiet company would be perfect for Venice and she imagined his fair head bobbing among the sleek, dark Italian ones all round her. She remembered his words at the airport and his mouth touching hers, and thought, I do want to go back to him. Then the reality of Venice engrossed her again and Darcy sank back into her subconscious.