Salvi nods. He lays down his knife and fork and calls over the waitress. I offer to pay half but he waves me down. He tips generously and we stand up and he takes my hand in his as he guides me through the tables and out through the arch of the cloister that leads to the dark passageway, between the cobbler’s and the deli, and as we come out on to the street the skies are furiously grey and the wind has really whipped up: a strange, hot wind that attacks and disarrays the ruffles of my dress and detonates my hair.

‘From the Sahara,’ says Salvi, and I remember the summer winds we sometimes get, which coat cars with dust so they are photographed for eerie-looking pictures in the newspapers and everybody can’t stop talking about it, but nobody minds, really, as these rare, random winds from the Sahara make England feel – just fleetingly – exotic and Arabian. ‘My car’s this way.’

CHAPTER 31

Monday morning dawns hot and bright. From Salvi’s bedroom window all I can see is a square of royal-blue sky and the trail of an aeroplane.

‘Yep, yep, Dino. That’s all done.’ Salvi’s in the kitchen. On the phone. It must be his landline as his mobile is on the bedside table beside me. The tap is running. The cafetière is being filled. Mugs are clanked from the cupboard. ‘Yep, sorted. Ha, no. But you know how it is. Good image for the club, though. Yeah. Yeah, mate. No, no, I’ll see you there. Yes, absolutely fine. OK, mate, yeah, have a good one.’

The bed is unmade. I am a little undone; despite the black satin sheet wrapped round my left leg and trailing over my naked stomach.

We didn’t sleep together.

Salvi drove too fast, way too fast, in his Aston Martin something-or-other, all turquoise and leather, on the way here. It frightened me. Initially, we purred through the streets, Salvi courteously letting drivers out, braking evenly at traffic lights, humming along to the radio, driving executively, but somewhere near his flat, on a more open stretch of road, the car surged forward, and Salvi turned up the radio – the song ‘Halo’ by Texas; its soaring instrumental break with all those strings, in the middle, an interlude and a crescendo – and laughed at my terrified protests as we scalded along at a terrifying speed, flying past the identical black doors of elegant townhouses, streaking towards the end of the street and a looming set of red traffic lights …

‘Fucking hell!’ I cried, as we came to a high-performance but very sudden stop, my heart hammering in its incandescent cage.

Salvi laughed. He reached across me and snapped down the tan leather sun visor. There was a mirror on the underside, winking at me, a little light above it.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘It really put the colour in your cheeks.’