They produced a pack of large, brightly coloured cards and set about teaching us to play scopa. There were four suits, each with its knave, knight and king. Where was the queen? I asked. The boy who didn’t say much pointed to the sky: ‘La luna.’ The queen of the night was lying on her back surrounded by stars that looked sharp enough to scratch. Someone sitting nearby stuck ‘Psycho Killer’ into a tape deck – ‘Fa-fa-fa-faa-fa,’ we all sang together, ‘fa-fa-fa-faa …’ But after our night on the train, sleep was coming for me as stubbornly as death. My body started to reel forward, and I had to make myself sit up. The most valuable card in the game was the sette bello, the seven of coins: I saw it there, in my hand.

The crossing took eleven hours. In Olbia the next morning we said goodbye to the Italians, who were setting out on a hike. Minna and I had to get to the other side of the island, which involved two buses. The first had waited for the ferry and left straight away. It carried us past dilapidated houses set with the blue eyes of glassless windows. Sheep pastured behind a low stone wall showed us their narrow, humourless faces – they’d gladly have watched us hanged as witches. The road curved around a hill, and there, rising like a vision on the far side of a lake of grass, were rows of trees sheeted in white blossom. Almost at once the road swerved, the valley dropped away and, although I clutched Minna’s arm, she missed the orchard. She was wearing a bra for meeting John Berger’s mistress, but, ‘Judder-judder-judder!’ she complained, jiggling her breasts as the bus negotiated the potholed roads.

I’m sorry to refer to the woman we were going to visit as ‘John Berger’s mistress’. I heard her name once or twice and forgot it long ago. Minna preferred to call her ‘John Berger’s mistress’ with calculated scorn in order to show that she wasn’t intimidated. This woman and Minna’s mother had been students together, and that was why John Berger’s mistress couldn’t refuse to see us. ‘There are things,’ said Minna with dark satisfaction, ‘that my mother knows.’

The bus dropped us off in a drab village where we had over an hour to wait. In the single, gloomy cafe, we ate rolls filled with maroon ham. Three old men were playing cards in a corner, and I asked Minna, ‘Did I have the sette bello last night?’ She replied that she’d forgotten everything she ever knew about scopa or the previous night.