‘Stop fussing, Bel. I’m just getting old, that is all,’ Carla insisted. ‘Now, look after yourself until you’re home safe with us again.’

As Carla released her daughter, Bel could see the tears brimming in her mother’s eyes.

Antonio then took her in his arms.

‘Goodbye, my princesa, and I hope that once you have seen the beauty of the Old World, you will still wish to come back home to your loving mother and father and your fiancé.’

Bel went upstairs with them to the deck and waved them goodbye as they set off down the gangplank. As they shrank to specks from her high vantage point, for the first time Bel experienced a rush of anxiety. She was travelling across the world with a family she hardly knew. And as the ship’s horn blasted the nerve endings in her ears, and the gap between vessel and shore began to widen, she waved frantically at them.

‘Adeus, my sweet mother and father. Keep safe, and God bless you both.’

Bel enjoyed the voyage, with its endless stream of entertainments for the well-heeled guests. Maria Elisa and she whiled the hours away swimming in the pool – a pleasure far sweeter because it had always been denied to her in Rio – and playing croquet on the artificial grass on the upper deck. The two girls giggled over the admiring glances of the many young men aboard as they entered the dining room every evening.

As an engaged girl, Bel’s large ring afforded protection from overly affectionate males emboldened by wine as they danced to the ship’s band after dinner. But Maria Elisa enjoyed a number of innocent flirtations, which Bel supported and lived through vicariously.

During the voyage, she came to know Maria Elisa’s family far better than she ever would have done in Rio, thrown together upon the ocean as they were. Maria Elisa’s two younger brothers, Carlos and Paulo, were fourteen and sixteen respectively, at the awkward stage between childhood and adulthood, with rough growth beginning to sprout on their chins. They rarely plucked up the courage to speak to Bel. Maria Elisa’s mother, Maria Georgiana, was an intelligent, sharp-eyed woman, who Bel soon learnt was prone to sudden bursts of anger if something didn’t suit her. She spent much of the day playing bridge in the elegant salon, while her husband rarely surfaced from his cabin.

‘What does your father do in there all day?’ questioned Bel of Maria Elisa one evening as they were nearing the Cape Verde islands off the coast of Africa, where the boat was docking for a few hours to pick up supplies.

‘He is working on his Cristo, of course,’ Maria Elisa had answered. ‘Mãe says she has lost the love of her husband to Our Lord, a person he has so often said he doesn’t believe in! Ironic, isn’t it?’

One afternoon, Bel knocked on the door of what she had thought was Maria Elisa’s cabin. Receiving no reply, she opened the door and called out for her. She immediately realised that she’d made a mistake, as a surprised Heitor da Silva Costa looked up at her from a desk covered with sheets of complex architectural calculations. Not only had they taken over the desk, but the bed and the floor too.