The car slowed to a crawl as the driver looked for the address, pedestrians having to squeeze past to get by, glancing down at the blacked-out windows with both annoyed and curious looks.

Señora Quincy looked uncomfortable. Perhaps it was the attention, but, more likely, it was the stress of what they were embarking upon – a return to her old home for the first time in . . . well, no one yet knew how many years. In spite of the ivory quilted aniline leather upholstery and the air-conditioned seats, she looked as uncomfortable as if she was wearing a wool dress in a heatwave – her shoulders twitching, hands clasped tightly together, eyes pressed shut as though if she couldn’t see it, it wasn’t really happening. In fact, she was perfectly attired again – wearing a teal linen shift dress, a pale-pink plastic bangle at her wrist and pink-rimmed spectacles. Forget ninety-eight, Charlotte thought – watching her eyes flicker behind her glasses – she could have passed for a woman twenty years younger, easily; only the utter transparency of her thin, fragile skin betrayed a body that was older than the spirit.

‘The address is across the plaza there but I cannot turn into the street,’ the driver said, turning slightly so that his face was in profile to her. ‘Nor can I park here.’

‘It’s fine, I’ll knock,’ she said in a thin voice, undoing her seat belt. ‘What is the address?’

He told her, pointing to a corner apartment above a tapas bar on the opposite side of the tiny square.

‘Okay, I’ll be right back,’ she murmured, her eyes already fastened to it as she hopped down. People stared at her as she emerged from the vehicle, clearly wondering if she was famous, or at least powerful, but she didn’t register their interest. Only one thing was running through her head: this is where he lives. His life is here now.

His fingers intertwined in hers. Sunlight streaming in. The middle of the afternoon. Twisted sheets—

Her eyes scanned the plaza as she walked quickly, taking in the espresso bar (did he get his morning coffee there?), the old bookshop (he would definitely browse there at the weekends), the artsy jeweller’s, selling turquoise and silver earrings (no). There was a gallery too, a long thin bronze sculpture of a man on a pedestal in the window.

‘. . . Let’s skip the party.’ His voice low. Slow.

‘And do what?’

A shrug. ‘Go to the cottage. Be alone. Just the two of us for once. No one else—’

She was at his door. It was set off to the side, away from the steel tables and plastic-wicker chairs that crowded at the building’s base. There was nothing to mark the significance of the place, nothing to indicate that he – once the most important person in her world – lived and ate and slept here.

She pressed the buzzer for Apartment 3, as the driver had told her, and she stepped back, feeling her body brace with the anticipation of seeing him again. The visceral shock of it.