In fact, it was so early that the garden statue yard wasn’t open and she had to look for an area where the fencing that enclosed it was breachable. Eventually she found a low and rather unstable stone wall next to it, and was able to climb in. She waited a moment, holding her breath for an alarm to go off, but there was only the sound of a lone bird trilling away in the tree above her.

She swiftly made her way to the place where the tarpaulin had been. Thank God – it was still there.

She quietly moved the pile of logs surrounding it until the whole thing was uncovered, and then began to tackle the knot in the rope that secured it. It would have been easier and quicker to cut the rope, but that would make it obvious that it had been tampered with.

As she finally managed to pull it undone, she laughed at the idea of Dr Moira O’Reilly, recently retired academic, becoming part burglar, part spy. Still, she had to admit there was a certain exhilaration lacking in her previous library-dominated existence.

And there it was: Venus’s stone couch with its two supporting pillars, beautifully carved in Parian marble and quite amazingly well preserved. Moira could hardly breathe with the excitement. She’d done it!

She stood back and photographed it from five or six angles on her phone, had the wit to send the shots to Dora, then quickly pulled back the tarpaulin, retied the knot and began to pile the logs back around it, all the while half-expecting someone to come and ask her what the hell she was doing.

She looked round only once. Somewhere in front and to the right, near the hut, she thought she heard a noise; but there seemed to be no one there.

When the last log was replaced, she made her way to the place she had come in. The wall started to crumble as she put her weight on it at the other side of the wire, and she found herself tumbling into the scrub beyond. Luckily the fall was cushioned by a patch of bright blue flowering borage. As she picked herself up she remembered Pliny’s claim that borage was the famous ‘nepenthe’ mentioned in Homer which, mixed with wine, induced forgetfulness. She picked a bunch to try it out.

There was still no one about.

She tried to look as natural as possible as she made her way against the crowds, feeling like the infuriating person going the wrong way to the Tube at rush hour. Eventually, to her relief, she arrived at the harbour and found a cafe. There were two hours to kill before the ferry came, and even then she’d have to go via two other islands to get to Kyri.