I finish my coffee, place my mug in Salvi’s sink and go to the bedroom to retrieve my dress and my shoes. I fold up Salvi’s T-shirt and place it on top of his chest of drawers, then I snoop around a little, like they do in films. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find – a gun in a drawer or a sealed letter to an unknown woman? There’s nothing. Just suits and shoes and underwear and a couple of Jack Reacher books on a bedside table. It seems Salvi has nothing to hide. I even look on the top of his wardrobe – but it is dust free and there is no locked box of secrets. The only thing of remote interest I find, in the drawer of his bedside table, is a small stack of cards for somewhere called The Profilo Club. A purple card with simply the name and a website address on it. ‘Profilo’ is ‘profile’ in Italian: I imagine a swanky gentlemen’s club full of Italian professionals all drinking grappa and talking about the Old Country. I take one of the cards – as a souvenir, I suppose – and slip it into the pocket of my dress then, once I’ve brushed my teeth with Salvi’s toothbrush and rinsed it, it’s time to leave.

I wash up for him, place the tea towel over the handle of the oven door and grab my bag. It’s only as the door gently clicks behind me that I realize I have no idea when I’m going to see him again.

CHAPTER 25

‘What’s that tickling my calf?’

‘A Womble. Orinoco, I think.’

The Northern Line is experiencing a few problems this afternoon. Dad and I have been stuck in the black soot of a tunnel for five minutes and counting, and people are starting to get restless. There’s been a few ‘Bloody hell’s and a couple of ‘Fuck’s sake’s. A child has asked ‘Mummy, why are we stuck?’ about fourteen times. A man with a violin case has sighed the sigh of a man who finds the world simply intolerable. Dad and I have seats, but it’s really hot and oppressive and we’re wedged in by a Stonehenge of enormous suitcases and a giant retro cuddly toy.

‘I don’t remember Wombles,’ Dad frowns, but then he smiles vaguely in the approximate direction of Orinoco’s owner. He – a boy in a red baseball cap and an Avengers T-shirt – pats Orinoco on the head and looks a bit worried, as children often do around blind people – it’s that natural embarrassment he’ll be able to hide when he’s older. I smile at him, too.

‘And what’s that smell?’ asks Dad.

‘Ssh.’

For some unfathomable reason, the woman opposite us has pulled a glass jar from her bag and is tucking into the first of two huge stinky hardboiled eggs.