‘Have you ever been in love?’ Floriano asked me in his usual blunt fashion.

‘Yes, once. I think I mentioned it to you,’ I said hurriedly. ‘And told you it didn’t work out.’

‘Ah, yes, and that one experience has apparently scarred you for life.’

‘It was a little more complicated than that,’ I countered defensively.

‘These situations always are. Look at Bel and Laurent. If you read these, you might presume they were simply a young man and woman in love.’

‘Well, that’s how my first love affair began, but not how it ended.’ I shrugged as I watched him reach for another cigarette. ‘Do you mind if I have one too?’

‘Not at all. Please, go ahead,’ he said as he proffered the pack.

I lit the cigarette, inhaled and smiled at him. ‘I haven’t had one of these since university.’

‘Well, I wish I could say the same. Valentina is forever trying to persuade me to give them up. And maybe one day I will,’ he said taking a deep drag. ‘So, this love of yours who broke your heart . . . do you want to tell me what happened?’

After fourteen years of remaining completely silent on the subject, and, in fact, doing anything and everything to avoid talking about it, I wondered what on earth I was doing on a roof terrace in Rio with a man I hardly knew feeling almost ready to tell him.

‘Really, Maia, you don’t have to,’ Floriano said, seeing the fear in my eyes.

But instinctively, I knew that this was the reason why I’d come to him tonight. The story I’d been hearing over the past few days – coupled with Pa Salt’s death – had unleashed the pain and guilt of what I had once done. Then there was Floriano, of course, whose life circumstances had held up an unflattering mirror to my own sad, solitary life.

‘I will say it,’ I blurted out before I lost my nerve. ‘When I was at university, I met someone. He was a couple of years older than me and I met him in the last semester of my second year. He was in his final year and about to leave. I fell in love with him and was very careless and stupid. When I went home for the summer, I realised I was pregnant. But it was too late to do anything about it. So,’ I sighed, knowing I must tell the story quickly and get to the end before I broke down, ‘Marina, the woman I’ve mentioned to you, who brought all us six girls up, helped me arrange to go away and have the baby. Then’ – I paused, garnering every ounce of courage I had to speak the words – ‘when he was born, I gave him up immediately for adoption.’

Taking a large gulp of wine, I screwed my fists into my eyes to dam the torrent that was in danger of flooding out of them.