‘Oh, I’m not thinking about myself only,’ said Georgie in self-defence. ‘Not so at all. It’ll react on you. You and I are supposed to talk Italian together, and when it’s obvious I can’t say more than three things in it, the fat’s in the fire, however much influenza you have. How are you going to be supposed to jabber away in Italian to me when it’s seen that I can’t understand a word of it?’

Here indeed was the male angle, and an extremely awkward angle it was. For a moment Lucia covered her face with her hands.

‘Georgie, what are we to do?’ she asked in a stricken voice.

Georgie was a little ruffled at having been considered of such absolute unimportance until he pointed out to Lucia that her fate was involved with his, and it pleased him to echo her words.

‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ he said stiffly.

Lucia hastened to smooth his smart.

‘My dear, I’m so glad I thought of consulting you,’ she said. ‘I knew it would take a man’s mind to see all round the question, and how right you are! I never thought of that.’

‘Quite,’ said Georgie. ‘It’s evident you haven’t grasped the situation at all.’

She paced up and down the garden-room in silence, recoiling once from the window, as she saw Elizabeth go by and kiss her hand with that awful hyena grin of hers.

‘Georgie, ’oo not cross with poor Lucia?’ she said, resorting to the less dangerous lingo which they used in happier days. This softened Georgie.

‘I was rather,’ said Georgie, ‘but never mind that now. What am I to do? Che faro, in fact.’

Lucia shuddered.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t talk Italian,’ she said. ‘It’s that we’ve got to avoid. It’s odd that we have to break ourselves of the habit of doing something we can’t do… And you can’t have influenza too. It would be too suspicious if you began simultaneously with me tomorrow. I’ve often wondered, now I come to think of it, if that woman, that Mapp, hasn’t suspected that our Italian was a fake, and if we both had influenza exactly as the Faraglione arrived, she might easily put two and two together. Her mind is horrid enough for anything.’

‘I know she suspects,’ said Georgie. ‘She said some word in Italian to me the other day, which meant paper-knife, and she looked surprised when I didn’t understand, and said it in English. Of course, she had looked it out in a dictionary: it was a trap.’

A flood of horrid light burst in on Lucia.