The sheet of hot water pouring down her naked body from the overhead fitting – which she estimated was an impressive ten inches across – made her wish Devan were there to enjoy it too. They used to shower together sometimes, in the past, soaping each other and themselves, chatting and laughing about nothing in particular in the steamy warmth of the capacious shower Devan had insisted on installing when they’d first bought the house. It wasn’t a sexual thing – although occasionally it led to that – just a cosy ritual they both enjoyed.

As she sat at her table, stirring a small brown-sugar cube into her coffee, a voice behind her dragged her back to the present.

‘Is it too breezy out here?’ The carefully modulated vowels were instantly recognizable. Dinah Worthington, in her early eighties, was on the tour with her godson. She was like a duchess, Connie thought – although she’d never met a real one – with her gracious but slightly condescending politeness and the obvious expectation that doors would be opened, chairs pulled out and an arm always at the ready for her to lean on. All of which her godson, Jared, patiently and apparently willingly supplied.

Connie turned. ‘How was Como?’

Dinah started. ‘Gosh, Connie, I didn’t see you there.’ She pulled her floppy straw hat from her white curls and sat down with a grateful sigh at the vacant table next to Connie’s. The terrace was nearly empty now. It was gone three and the restaurant in a lull between lunch and dinner.

Jared hovered for a moment, looking around as if he were checking there wasn’t somewhere better, then sat down opposite Dinah. With his grey polo shirt, sunglasses hooked on the top button, rust-red trousers and deck shoes with no socks, he would have passed unnoticed in a crowd of British holidaymakers, except for his eye-catching Bradley Cooper hair – thick, shiny brown with golden natural highlights and falling, one length, to the collar of his shirt. It would flop, at regular intervals, across his face, and he would sweep it back over his head, like a film star.

In the few exchanges she’d had with him so far – mostly pertaining to his godmother, such as managing the air-conditioning controls in her room or whether Connie thought Dinah would cope with the steep Varenna streets – she’d found him reserved, bordering on standoffish. Not unpleasant, it was just as if he wasn’t quite comfortable being on the tour. Which maybe had something to do with his age – early fifties, Connie reckoned. Almost twenty years younger than the majority of the group.