‘It is very pretty here,’ I say. I really want to divert from ugliness. I don’t want to think about the murdered monk, blood on his robes, over in the cloisters, bleeding to death. Tragedy. And least of all my face. My birthmark is scalding to the touch now. I really want to swap seats again with Salvi, but I daren’t ask.

Food arrives. Two waiters bring bowls of soup and a wide shallow dish of courgette fritters, plus a huge bread basket, filling our table with them.

‘Ah, brilliant,’ exclaims Salvi, his big eyes lighting up. He is a man who devours, I think. Who devours life when I have always just picked at it, like a bird.

He encourages me to start with the steaming bowl of lobster bisque I would ordinarily find delicious but I am so so hot. I slurp at it half-heartedly and drink more wine. I feel slightly ill, in my lovely buttercup dress with the big white flowers, as Salvi chatters on, in his lovely position with his back to the sun, a carousel of life and personality. He is dazzle to my dull; sparkle to my leaden apathy. Why did he say that about ‘downright ugliness’? I feel I can’t recover from it. I feel I can’t recover from what Kemp said, either. That he wanted me. Because I was ugly and available.

When the soup bowls have been pushed to one side, mine barely touched, Salvi looks at me from across the table – my face a blazing fire – and says, ‘I like you. I like you very much.’

‘Do you?’ My stomach flips a little, from its position of low-slung wallowing in my ugliness.

‘Yes.’

‘What’s in it for you?’ I ask.

‘What’s in it for me?’ he laughs, his head back and his mouth wide open, and I wish he would stop laughing and lean across the table and kiss me as I need to be kissed, right now. I really, really need to. ‘You are what’s in it for me. You, Prudence.’

I am drunk, I realize. Proper wobbly, no-return drunk. The sun in my face is becoming unbearable. My cheeks are so fucking hot. I want him to either kiss me or let me run from here, into shade and air. I don’t want the three further courses. I don’t want any more wine.

‘I think you’re beautiful,’ he says.