Señora Quincy flinched at her words, nodding in understanding.

‘May I ask what he is to you?’ Charlotte asked quietly. ‘What is your connection to him?’

At that, Marina Quincy hooked an almost hairless brow. ‘You mean to say you don’t know?’

Charlotte shrugged. ‘We’ve jumped to one wrong conclusion already.’ Her eyes briefly met Marina’s. ‘I hesitate to guess again: a former friend? Boyfriend?’

‘More than that.’

‘Husband?’ Charlotte asked.

She shook her head.

‘. . . Brother?’

‘More than that,’ the old woman repeated, just as Marina said at the same time, ‘My grandmother was an only child. Orphaned in the war.’ Marina gasped as she heard her grandmother’s contradictory reply.

Charlotte saw the intense look simmering in those grey eyes; something was waking from deep within her. ‘I don’t understand: how can he be more than a brother?’

‘Oh, quite easily,’ the old woman said, fire in her eyes and a secret on her lips.

Mateo’s white sneakered foot was already twitching anxiously by the time she rushed up the steps. He was dressed in his tennis whites, his signature glass of chilli-infused water beaded with condensation.

‘Charlotte, our third meeting in almost as many days. You have good news for me, I hope?’

She shook his hand and tipped her head in a half-shrug. ‘I definitely have news.’

‘Did you make the offer?’ he asked impatiently.

The waiter came over and without pause or ceremony she ordered a Pellegrino. She sat down on the rush seat, the pale-blue cushions a gentle complement to her shell-pink dress.

‘A lot has happened in the past twenty-four hours, so I’ll get to the point,’ she said directly. ‘We discovered last night that the Marina Quincy identified in the report was the wrong Marina Quincy.’

‘What?’ Mateo looked aghast. ‘No, absolutely not,’ he rebutted sharply. ‘Those researchers were working with information directly supplied from my father’s lawyers. They haven’t got this wrong.’

‘To the letter, no. But Miss Quincy is in fact named after her grandmother who, although she’s living in a care home, remains the legal owner of the apartment – even though it is her granddaughter who lives there now.’

She paused, seeing how the consternation in his expression changed into confoundment. Two women with the same name, two generations apart, living at the same address? It was an unfortunate coincidence.

She continued. ‘I met the older Marina Quincy this morning but I’m afraid she has point-blank refused to accept the offer.’

‘So then we’re negotiating?’ He scowled, a look of disgust deepening across his features.

‘No, she says she’s not interested in money. The only thing she has said she will do is see your father.’

‘What?’ he thundered, his composure slipping completely and sending a sparrow pecking at his feet, flying back into the bushes. He looked apoplectic. ‘That is precisely what we said she could not do. My father is dying. I will not have her coming into the heart of our family and spreading her poison—’