Domenica nodded. For centuries Italy had provided balm for the troubled spirit. Even a small dose of Italy – a week or so – helped. And, as she contemplated this, she remembered that she had been invited to Italy by her neighbour, Antonia, who had been offered the loan of a villa in the Sienese hills. At the time, she had not paid much attention to the invitation, which had been a vague one, but now it seemed to her to be the perfect solution to her disquiet. And one never knew what minor research project might suggest itself as one sipped cappuccino in a piazza café. Peer group relationships among visitors to Italian art cities? A Room with a View! One might even get such accommodation; one never knew.

9. The Grosseto Road

It seemed to be a perfect plan. A couple of weeks in Italy – perhaps even a month – would be just the tonic that Domenica required. What could be better, she asked herself, than slipping into the routine of the Italian villa life in summer? A leisurely, late breakfast on the patio would be followed by a walk into the nearby village. There she would drink a lingering cup of coffee in the piazza, followed by the purchase of a few necessities for lunch: olives, prosciutto, a lump of pecorino, crisp rolls. Then back to the villa for a late morning read of the paper or some slow-moving summer novel, followed by lunch itself, and then a siesta through the heat of the early afternoon. By which time she would be ready for another walk, breathing in deeply the country air, with its tang of white dust and lavender and complex spices; oh, bliss, and bliss again.

Antonia had not given many details of the villa when she issued the invitation. All she said was that it belonged to a distant cousin of hers, a woman who lived in London and had inherited it from her mother, a noted art historian of the 1950s who had known Berenson, she said, and Pope-Hennessy, and ‘all the others’. At this, Antonia had waved a hand airily, as if to encompass a host of art historians, milling about vaguely, attributing here and there, passing on vaguely scandalous stories about one another over agreeable lunches in the hills above Florence.

The villa, she said, was called the Villa Oregano, and was halfway between Montalcino and Sant’Angelo in Colle, on the Grosseto Road. Antonia spoke as if Domenica should know the Grosseto Road, as one might be expected to know Lothian Road, or Princes Street, perhaps. This was a habit she had which mildly irritated Domenica. She would suddenly mention one of her obscure, undoubtedly non-existent Scottish saints, as if Domenica should be as familiar with him as she was with rather more historical figures of Scottish history, such as James VI or John Maclean.

‘The Grosseto Road?’

Antonia nodded. ‘Yes. You know how it runs from Montalcino down to Grosseto?’