On Helena’s return we went down to Antium. We were enjoying our break from the children, and we did love to be out and about on enquiries. She was right: I must never stop doing this work—and when it was feasible I must always let her join in.

Helena was charmed by Antium, with its shabby, outdated grandeur. As always happens, there was nothing we wanted to see at the theatre, though old posters told us annoyingly that the week before Davos, our old contact who was Thalia’s lover, had presented a play here. I would really have liked the chance for a chat with Davos!

Exploring more successfully than I had had time to do with Albia, Helena and I managed to find decent local baths then a cluster of fish restaurants. We lingered over a fine meal, eaten out of doors with grand sea views from the lofty precipice where Antium stood. This was always an hour when we liked to come together, to relax, review the day and reassert our partnership. With just the two of us tonight, it was like old times—that elusive condition married people should seek more often.

As we savoured the last of our wine, I took her hand and said, ‘Everything will be all right.’

‘The case, Marcus?’

‘No, not that.’

Helena knew what I meant.

We enjoyed the evening a little longer, then I went to pay the bill and ask the restaurant-keeper where he bought his bread. His baker was not Vexus, Demetria’s father; still, the man gave me suggestions where to start looking next day.

I went on my own, leaving Helena to take Nux around the forum.

It took me some tramping of narrow streets. Vexus worked at the edge of the city, with one small oven and not even his own grindstone. It was a rough, depressed quarter with dusty streets where half-starved dogs lay on doorsteps like corpses. There were better shops, with a better clientele, in the smarter areas. This man, a short, thickset ugly-faced fellow, baked heavy dark ryebread for the poor. He looked as if he had been miserable for the past thirty years. I began to understand how his daughter, growing up here without a future, might have settled for one of the Claudii. Even so, there seemed nothing basically wrong with the home she came from. Unless she had only one eye in the middle of her forehead yet failed to attract men with her novelty value, there was no reason for Claudius Nobilis to assume she was so desperate he could treat her badly.

I bought a bread roll to start the conversation; it never works. As soon as I said what I wanted, Vexus turned unhelpful. He had not overflowed with customer care to start with. I introduced myself and I might have been trying to sell him a silver-boxed ten-scroll set of Greek encyclopaedias. Used ones.

‘Get lost.’