I listen to her like I’m listening to a story that isn’t mine. It feels distant – that place, that wilderness, Lucia. I stand in Papi’s kitchen, the windows open to the sound of people walking below, pigeon wings.

‘Don’t worry,’ Auntie Kavitha says. ‘We’ll sort it all out.’

Papi has gone to buy fish from the Rialto market. He’s turning the key in the door and walking through, setting the bags down. ‘Bye then, bye,’ I say, quickly, slamming down the lid of the computer.

‘You behave like a child of divorced parents,’ Papi says, laughing. ‘When Father comes in, get off the phone with Mother.’

‘I am the child of divorced parents,’ I say. ‘I just know you have issues with her, so I don’t want to get entangled in all that.’

‘She was a good friend to your mother. Too good, perhaps.’

He never asks about the situation, isn’t curious about the outcome of all these lives I’ve spoken about. There’s a friend of his he wants me to meet. She’s coming over for dinner. Her name is Marcella. He tells me nothing more except she can be a little grand.

Papi sets to work in the kitchen. He’s a good cook, able to put together meals that are simple, but over which you can linger. Nothing like my hearty, one-pot dishes that made you want to immediately lie down. ‘You make nothing well,’ he complained when he’d been in bed with pneumonia. ‘How is it possible that you learned nothing in the kitchen?’

Marcella arrives early and is dressed in that slapdash aristocratic way that Italian women of a certain generation have – elegant, but nothing too thought over. Slacks, a silk shirt, beads from an interesting country, impeccable shoes. Face clear of make-up except for a smear of coral lipstick. She has maintained herself well: there’s a slight thickening around the waist and hips, but she keeps a straight back and when she looks at you, it is with a kind of hunger. I feel the mysterious need to be liked by her.

‘Why did you leave America?’ she asks. She listens sympathetically. ‘Matrimony is such a bore, but oh, North Carolina,’ she scowls. ‘No, no. A person like you should really be in New York.’

When I tell her how I’ve come to hate cities, she smiles at me as though I were a child telling a lie.