‘No problem,’ said the concierge. ‘Do you wish for the car immediately?’

‘Yes.’

And so it came to pass that ten minutes later, I was back in Pietro’s car, heading slowly out of the centre of the city.

‘This house, A Casa das Orquídeas, I think I know it,’ he commented.

‘I don’t,’ I confessed.

‘Well, if it’s the one I think it is, it is most interesting. It’s very old and used to be inhabited by a rich Portuguese family,’ he said as we came to yet another grinding halt in the traffic jams he’d told me never ceased.

‘The house may have new owners,’ I mused.

‘This is true.’ He eyed me in the mirror, and I knew he sensed my tension. ‘Are you searching for a relative?’

‘Yes,’ I answered honestly, glancing up as we drove and immediately seeing Christ the Redeemer hovering above me. Never having been particularly religious, somehow at that moment I felt an extraordinary sense of comfort from His all-encompassing, outstretched arms.

‘So, we will pass the address you want in a couple of minutes,’ Pietro advised me fifteen minutes later. ‘I doubt you can see much from the road, because it is surrounded by a high hedge to give it privacy. This used to be a very exclusive neighbourhood, but now, sadly, much development has taken place around it.’

I could see that the road was indeed lined with a mixture of industrial buildings and apartment blocks.

‘The house is there, senhorita.’

I followed Pietro’s pointed finger and saw a long stretch of overgrown hedge, wild flowers poking their pretty but destructive heads through the leaves. Compared to our immaculately maintained garden in Geneva, this one looked to me as if it had not seen a tender pair of hands caring for it in a very long time.

All I could see above the hedge was a set of old-fashioned chimneys; their original brick-red colour had been covered by years of soot and had faded to blackness.

‘Maybe the house is unoccupied,’ shrugged Pietro, immediately assessing, as I had, the unkempt look of the outside.

‘Maybe,’ I agreed.

‘Shall I park here?’ he asked me, slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road a few metres past the property.

‘Yes please.’

Bringing the car to a halt, he switched off the engine and turned to face me. ‘I shall be here waiting for you. Good luck, Senhorita D’Aplièse.’

‘Thank you.’

I climbed out of the car and slammed the door with far more force than necessary, preparing myself for what might come. As I walked along the pavement, I told myself that, in fact, whatever occurred in the next few minutes of my life didn’t matter. I’d always had a loving father and de facto mother, and I’d had my sisters. And if anything, the reason I was here was less to do with whatever I might find hidden behind these hedges, and far more to do with what I’d instinctively run away from.