We resumed our journey. The smell in the hot little car was now ashtray, cigarettes, vomit and Gina Lollobrigida’s powerful breath. Eventually she smiled with embarrassment and threw up again. This time, Vittorio used a rag to remove the lumpier bits and the slimy strands of grass. Then he flung the rag away and urged us back into the Fiat, hissing, ‘Speedy! Speedy!’ as he raced to the driver’s door. Gina Lollobrigida, sniffing flowers in a meadow, raised her trusting head too late. She bounded forward, Minna and I shouting, ‘Stop!’ and ‘Gina!’ as if Vittorio had simply forgotten her. He was flooring the accelerator, his arms stretched out straight. He held forth – when I asked what he was saying, Minna replied that he was speaking dialect.

Time passed. ‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ I said.

‘Well, you know what’ll happen to you if you do.’

The smell had worked itself up to the point where Vittorio wound down his window a fraction and authorised Minna to do the same. He carried on smoking and talking nonstop. He looked harmless, which meant that he was probably a murderer. The black cross on the back of his seat – what did it signify? I hummed a few bars of ‘Psycho Killer’, and Minna twisted around to grin at me. ‘Run run run run run run,’ she sang under her breath and began to laugh. Vittorio joined in, laughing hugely at our fun – it was the prelude to killing us, for sure.

In the late afternoon we reached a prosperous-looking village strung along the road. The stone houses were in good repair, and the grass in front of the church was trim. There was a mini-mart and a hairdressing salon, both smartly painted. Minna was inclined to think that we’d find John Berger’s mistress living outside the village. ‘In an old farmhouse, I bet. John Berger would expect a kitchen garden and fruit trees. There might be a pig.’ Vittorio asked a woman sitting on a wall for directions. She was raising her baby in the air and lowering him and raising him again to make him laugh. Every time he did, she kissed his knees.

Her directions took us beyond the village and onto a gravel road. The Fiat pulled up under an oleander, beside a spiky gate set in an undulating, tile-topped wall. We could smell the sea when we got out and hear it wheezing close at hand. Vittorio dismissed our thanks with a wave of his cigarette. He roared off, white dust from the road puffing up behind his wheels.

The buzzer at the gate summoned a security guard. Minna gave him a name, and he said that the person she wanted wasn’t there. Minna pointed to his watch and asked at what time she’d be back. We couldn’t understand what he replied, but he was shaking his head. ‘She’s a friend,’ Minna said firmly, in Italian and then in English. It made no difference to the guard. ‘A very good friend,’ said Minna, and that was useless as well.