I sat my finals in the middle of the year. Marco and I had started writing each other long, occasional letters a few months after he left, and our exchanges had become lively again. To celebrate what he called the end of my captivity, he invited me to spend a fortnight with him in Italy. When he came to meet me at the airport, he seemed looser, happier, in his own place. We spent time in Frascati, and travelled together to his parents’ farm in the countryside near Lake Bracciano. One day he came upon me lazily writing Riccarda’s name in the dust in Persian letters; I quickly erased the signs, but I think he knew what I was doing. Then Riccarda called to say that she was waiting for me in Rome: her cousin was exhibiting her sculptures and I could say I was attending the opening. Marco’s response to hearing I was going to leave him early was to offer to drive me to Rome. He didn’t seem to realise, at first, that I was leaving him, but when he did he said in a tone that was wry but indulgent: ‘One message from Madame X and you’re dumping me. I guess I should be jealous. Never mind, lots of beauties around.’

He dove, brown and bare-skinned, into the lake. I hadn’t told him, but he had guessed when she called, that I was going to spend a few well-planned days with Riccarda in Rome. The next morning he took me in a borrowed car to the station twenty miles away, held me close to his chest when we parted, and made me promise to meet him in India in winter.

Rome, in August, was drowsy, apricot-gold; sultrily abandoned to its silver fountains and its deep blue skies. For the first time in years, I began to imagine what it might be like to live away from London, the city that had been my only home for eleven years. Riccarda and I stayed together in Trastevere, at the apartment of Riccarda’s blonde and vibrant cousin Lilla, a sculptor and a poet, the opening of whose exhibition I had ostensibly come to Rome to attend.

Lilla knew when to leave us alone. Evenings the three of us would often spend together, sometimes in the company of friends, where I was introduced as Riccarda’s erstwhile desk-mate or as Lilla’s intellectual friend. Lilla would cook risotto with artichokes, or spaghetti with scallops and shrimps. Roman nights were lush; it even rained a few times. We would walk arm in arm, the three of us, singing Roman and Neapolitan songs; I remember Riccarda well, wandering around the streets of Rome in cotton trousers, her hair windblown, her lips and skin unpainted.