Harry’s Bar was a short walk away along the waterfront and they arrived only slightly late. A maître d’ in white jacket and black bow tie led them through the restaurant, past the long, polished-wood bar to a table at the back, where the Onassises were poring over menus. Aristotle leapt to his feet.

“I’m delighted you could come,” he declared in Italian, kissing Maria’s hand, shaking Battista’s, then clapping him on the back. “Please, sit. Bellinis all round? It seems fitting, when they are named after the great opera composer.”

Tall glasses of the bar’s trademark cocktail appeared: white peach juice mixed with Prosecco, so light and aromatic, it seemed impossible it was alcoholic.

Maria sat on a banquette next to Tina Onassis, a pretty woman with bleached blond hair and dark eyebrows who on closer scrutiny seemed scarcely out of her teens; there was clearly a substantial age gap in their marriage, as in hers.

“I’m honored you could join us,” she said to Maria. “I’m one of your biggest fans. Did Aristo tell you? I first heard you singing Aida at La Scala back in 1950, and since then I’ve flown to Milan for all your premières.”

“Really?” Maria was touched. “That’s very flattering. Do you live in Athens?”

“We have homes all over the place: Athens, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Montevideo . . .” She gave a quick eye roll, mocking the length of the list. “But Aristo is usually to be found on the Christina. He gets crotchety if he has to spend too long on dry land.”

Battista was telling Aristotle about the funds he was trying to raise to make a film of Maria singing Medea. She hoped their host didn’t feel he was being pressured to contribute.

“How long have you two been married?” she asked Tina, looking from one to the other.

“Forever!” Tina cried. “Eleven years. I was just seventeen at our wedding and Ari was forty, so I’m sure I seemed terribly childish. But then we had children and they make you grow up fast.”

She pulled one of those faces that Maria had often noticed mothers make: it was meant to be long-suffering but was really a look of pride. She would rather have joined Aristotle and Battista’s conversation about the film business but knew Tina was waiting for her to ask about the children, so she did.

“What ages are they now?”

Tina began to describe them, and Maria’s attention wandered. Everyone assumed that she hadn’t wanted children because of her devotion to her career, but it wasn’t true. She yearned for a baby, ached for one, and it simply hadn’t happened. A specialist had told her she had a malformation of the womb that would make it difficult, but not impossible, for her to get pregnant. She was thirty-three years old and all too aware that time was running out.