“Nothing too tortuous. You’ll start with a few gentle exercises to get your arm moving again. With this kind of break your movement might be more restricted from now on.”

Liv swallowed. “By how much?”

“He might struggle to reach books on top shelves.”

Johnny shrugged. “I’m not bothered by that.”

Liv shook her head slowly at him.

Afterward, they caught a bus back to the city center where Liv picked up some dry cleaning. She draped Essie’s black silk dress over the crook of her arm. “We’ll go to Essie’s flat to drop this off. I need to do some work.”

“Cool,” Johnny said. “She lives in that tall building, right? I think Daz Milan does, too.”

“Who?”

He fixed her with an incredulous stare. “Footballer, millionaire, playboy.”

She shook her head. She supposed the apartment block must be awash with the successful, rich and famous. “Just promise me you won’t touch anything.”

“Okay,” he sighed.

When Johnny looked up at the luxurious lobby, his face became a little boy’s again. Liv recalled his same expression when she took him to see the holiday light displays in the local shopping center at Christmas.

“This place is awesome,” he said. “You need to be loaded to live here.”

“I know.”

When the glass lift door opened, his mouth dropped. “It’s see-through,” he said. “When I’m older I’m going to live here.”

“Start saving now,” Liv laughed. “You might get a mortgage when you’re eight hundred years old.”

Johnny unfastened his laces in Essie’s hallway. He cocked his head, looking and listening. “Isn’t she home?”

“She’s working away,” Liv said, the lie now rolling off her tongue like dice from a gambler’s fingers.

When he stepped inside the living room, Johnny pretended to stagger backward. “It’s like being in heaven,” he said. “Why can’t we live somewhere like this?”

“Because I’m not a bestselling author.” Liv put her hands on her hips and looked around her. As the sun sparkled on the glass and the city stretched out before her, she couldn’t help feeling like the apartment was hers, somehow. She was the only one who used it. Might Essie have left it to her in her will, or things from inside it? Or was that crazy thinking? It would mean she could carry on writing as her job.

She just had to keep focused and not invoke the proviso Anthony had mentioned in Essie’s will.

It was the first time she’d thought about the solicitor for a few days, and she wondered if he was still in Bologna. “What are you going to do while I’m working?” she asked Jake.

He shrugged a shoulder and settled down on the sofa. “Go on my phone?” He raised it.

“You’re not doing that all day. Essie’s got lots of books you can look at.”