‘A fetishist? What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Someone who, like you, loves not only the person but also the things around her. For example, the door of the bank where I work.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I’ll tell you what. Two weeks ago, at eight-thirty in the morning. How many pictures did you take? I’d say at least twenty.’

‘I can’t hide anything from you. Who are you? The devil?’

So began our story that, in the end, filled the newspapers with bold headlines. There’s no sense in my telling you how the robbery took place. It was a ‘classic’ of the genre, according to reporters. If you want to know how it went, you can check the crime pages of that year’s newspapers. Nor do I want to tell you the prominent part that I played. It would be dangerous for me, since there’s been no further mention of it in the papers. For my colleagues at the bank, I am still the same old Miss Dutiful. The only thing I’d like to add is that the robbery took place in the early afternoon, when there are only a few employees and the bank is closed to customers. It was about four o’clock and I had escaped from home, right after the usual love-making with my husband. And with just an hour to spare before the children came home from school. I had to wait, at the wheel of the classic stolen car, on a solitary street, for my gangster and his buddy to arrive right after the robbery. Well, wouldn’t you know it? Despite my palpitations, the usual fatigue made me fall asleep at the wheel, in an amazing, invincible, blessed sleep. In sleep I took part in the robbery in my own way. I dreamt I was locked in the vault of the bank and then, all of a sudden, my gangster opened it and I, with a cry of joy, fell into his arms. But at that same moment, voilà, he was waking me up, shaking me by the arm, cursing between his teeth. Immediately, like a robot, without even looking around, I started the car and we took off.

After the robbery we didn’t see each other again for six months. He didn’t want us to. He said that the police were definitely enquiring into the life of every employee of the bank. We did, however, agree that after these six months, I would go and live with him, turning myself from Miss Dutiful to Machine-Gun Mama, or a similar moniker that, without a doubt, my former co-workers would give me, with a snicker, as soon as they found out.

So I resumed my usual life, shuttling between home and the bank. On one such day, I realized I had run out of cologne. That same afternoon I drove my husband to the airport. He was going to Cagliari on a business trip. On my way back I remembered the cologne and so I stopped the car on a suburban street, in front of a cosmetics shop named after the Parisian perfume house that made my cologne. The moment I entered, I was bedazzled by the gleaming of the many decanters, phials and teardrop-shaped bottles of eau de toilette and lotions lined up in glass cabinets against every wall. So for a moment I didn’t notice my gangster. Standing behind the counter, he was helping a middle-aged customer who wanted some rare shade of lipstick. My gangster had various little tubes scattered on the counter between himself and the customer. And as he gradually uncapped one and then the other, and rubbed a tiny smudge on the back of his hand, he enlarged the mark with his thumb and then showed it to the customer, speaking with her at length all the while, softly, gently, patiently. But the customer would look and then shake her head: it still wasn’t the shade she was looking for.