He returned her smile. ‘I am sure I shall. It’s so many years since I was there. Just after art college, in fact. I went there for two months on one of the travelling scholarships they gave in those days. I don’t know if they still do. Probably not.’

‘We are very ungenerous now.’

‘Yes,’ said Angus. ‘Just think: I was allowed, on public funding, to go to Italy and to soak in everything that it had to offer. They were paying me just to look.’

‘And to feel,’ said Domenica. ‘To experience.’

Angus nodded. ‘Exactly. And of course I felt that I had the whole world at my feet. When I went into the Uffizi and wandered round its galleries I felt that there was no reason why I should not in due course create paintings that were just as good as these, just as magnificent. I really did. I felt such confidence.’

Domenica touched the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Your work is very good.’

‘Hardly.’

She laid a hand on his arm. ‘Of course it is.’

‘Yes,’ said Antonia. ‘She’s right. We all love your painting.’

Angus lowered his eyes. ‘I went there to look, but I didn’t go to learn. That was my mistake. I should have tried to learn technique. I should have apprenticed myself to somebody. But I did none of those things. I had picnics in olive groves, I sat in cafés in Florence and Siena, I was like one of those silly characters from E. M. Forster’s novels. I wasted the opportunity.’

‘But we all waste opportunities,’ said Domenica. ‘Every single one of us. Every young person does it. It’s because we think we have so much time, and then, when we realise that our time is finite, it’s too late.’ She paused. ‘That’s just the way it is, Angus.’

He sighed. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’

Cyril moved against his leg, resting his head on his master’s foot.

‘Of course there is such a thing as the second chance,’ Domenica went on. ‘We may waste our first trip to Italy, but that doesn’t mean that we need waste our second.’

60. The Comfort of Friends

‘I feel really sorry for you, Bertie,’ said Olive. ‘I heard what happened, and I felt really sad. I want you to know that.’ Bertie, feeling somewhat disinclined to play, was standing at the edge of the playground at school; Olive, accompanied by Pansy, had come over to him, and now both girls were staring at Bertie, trying to ascertain whether or not he had been crying.

‘You mustn’t hold tears in,’ said Olive. ‘It’s better, you know, if you let yourself cry. We won’t laugh at you, will we, Pansy?’

Pansy shook her head. ‘Poor Bertie. You must feel awful. And just think – you were the last one to see her alive. That must make you feel really dreadful.’