Massimo was standing on the terrace, looking out across the pool to the hazy blue hills on the other side of the bay, just about to disappear into darkness. The neck of a bottle protruded from a crisp white napkin over an ice bucket. When he saw her coming, he picked up two flutes and chimed them gently together.

‘Aperitivo?’

‘Con piacere.’ He liked it when she made a bit of an effort, although she was determined to make it look effortless. She wanted to appear low-maintenance, companionable, easy-going-but-still-majorly-hot.

He poured, drinks fizzed, they clinked.

‘Cin cin.’

‘A te,’ she said.

‘A noi,’ he countered, which sounded promising.

He put an arm around her waist, and led her into the garden. It was still warm; the wind had dropped, and the walls of the house were giving back some of the heat of the day. They sat beneath the mulberry tree that gave the house its name, on a rustic wooden bench with an integral drinks table, where they often took their evening tipple. He stretched out his brown, muscular legs; he was wearing light blue shorts with crisp turn-ups, rather tight around the crotch, but flatteringly so. Massimo by name, she often teased him, Massimo by nature. In a drunken moment, he had once confided that his wife ‘couldn’t accommodate me’ and had done so only for the reason of procreation. Victoria had no such trouble. Her mouth watered.

‘It’s beautiful, huh?’ He made a large gesture, taking in the house, the garden, the mulberry tree above their heads, and beyond that the rapidly darkening sky. A cicada was singing somewhere nearby. Lights were starting to come on, like diamonds scattered carelessly across the hillside.

‘Yes, it’s lovely. You know how much I like it here.’

‘Better than Sardinia?’

‘Much better.’

‘You’d like to come here more?’

‘Well, of course . . .’ Put the bloody house in my name you bastard, if that’s what you’re driving at, let’s get it down on paper. ‘But I don’t really mind where we are, as long as we’re together.’ The house in Milan would be a good start, and then that pile in Surrey . . .

‘Tesoro . . .’ They clinked glasses again, and he kissed her. His lips tasted of champagne.

His phone rang.

‘Ah! Scusi. The food. Pronto . . .’

He got up, walked towards the gate. Two men in immaculate white waiter’s jackets relayed food from a van into the kitchen. No flatpacked pizza on the back of a moped for Signor Rivelli. It smelt delicious – rosemary, garlic, and was that prawn? Her mouth watered again.

‘And then, when I’ve built up a chain of about five gyms around London, I’ll sell the business and move back to Australia. I always said I’d come home a millionaire. Jeez, I mean money goes a lot further out there. London’s a competitive city, but I can do it. I’ve got a good client base started. You know, I’m on the ladder. I’ve got a lot of passion and energy.’