‘Don’t spill the soup on that waistcoat, will you?’ said Lena. ‘There’d be hell to pay.’

‘No chance,’ said Johanna. ‘And anyway, that’s your table tonight.’

‘You’re such a cheat, Jo. I know what it means to you. Just the chance of brushing against that lovely moustache. Go on. It’s all yours. Here’s the soup.’

‘But you’re the one who’s always going on about him.’

‘Oh, look, he’s dropped his napkin. Quick, you can pick it up and put it in his lap for him.’

Lena wondered whether Johanna really understood it when they spoke like this, but had avoided talking to her about men for fear of giving away the extent of her own experience. Whether she understood or not, Johanna was laughing too much to carry the bowls safely, so Florian and his mother had to wait for Frau Eberl’s sorrel soup.

After dinner, when only Norbert was still in the kitchen, taking out bins and sweeping the floor, Lena was able to drink almost half a decanter of red wine that had come back and been saved for cooking.

She made her way out of the main house and down the cloister, through the various courtyards until she came to her staircase. There were no shadows on the wall this time, she noticed, or perhaps she was just too light on her feet for them to reach out for her.

In her small room upstairs, she locked the door and went at once to the space behind the wardrobe. She poured a little wine into the glass on her washstand and opened the window wide onto the hot night. She took off all her clothes and lay on the bed, propped up on the pillows as she drank the wine, feeling a warm south wind come in from the lands that lay beyond the mountains. She closed her eyes and imagined that the breeze was Anton’s touch and that she could hear the rasp of his breathing as he kissed her skin.

Lena was polishing the hall floor the next morning when Anton came out of Martha’s office at the end of his consultation. She looked up from where she was kneeling, near the fireplace, and caught his eye.

He stopped and pulled back the flaps of his jacket to show the pale blue shirt beneath. ‘What do you think?’

Sitting back on her heels, Lena said, ‘I think …’ Something checked her from being effusive. ‘It’s a very good shirt and the colour suits you. But perhaps you should wear a different tie.’

‘This one’s the wrong colour?’

‘Not exactly wrong, but you need more of a contrast.’

‘I see what you mean. I rather grabbed the first one that came to hand. I only brought two ties anyway.’

‘I see.’

‘You know a lot about clothes.’

‘I used to work in a clothes shop.’ She paused, balanced her options and decided: ‘in Vienna.’

‘Ah well,’ said Anton. ‘That explains it. When am I going to see those paintings?’