‘. . . No, we can’t. They’ll all be waiting for us downstairs,’ she protested reluctantly, pulling away from his embrace and walking over to the window.

‘Let them wait. They’re dull anyway, and you know it.’

‘They’re my friends!’

‘They’re punching above their weight then,’ he sighed, collapsing back on the bed. ‘All they ever talk about is the going at Goodwood and Mary’s latest pair of new shoes. And Julian’s latest shag conquest, of course.’

‘Oh, Nate, you won’t be difficult this weekend, promise me? Let’s just have a good time. I know you find them boorish but they mean well. Contrary to popular opinion, Jules gets a really rough time of it at home with his old man.’

‘A slap around his head could only be for the good in my opinion. Please don’t give me his poor little rich boy story.’

‘You’ve got it all wrong about him, you know.’ He had loathed Jules ever since he’d overheard him describing Nathan as ‘chippy’ in the toilets at the pub on one of their first nights out as a couple. His integration into the group had been awkward, to say the least, and initially it had seemed that Jules had offered the friendliest welcome, making the betrayal all the greater when his true feelings were finally discovered.

‘I don’t think so – he’s spoilt, pampered and entitled. I can’t think why you’d want to defend him.’

‘Because I know him. The real him. We go back a long way.’

‘And are you going to go forwards a long way too?’

She shot him a look. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know it’s not like that between us.’

‘It was when we met.’

‘Precisely. And then we met and I realized how utterly clueless I’d been about love.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘You’re the one for me.’

‘Hmm,’ he said noncommittally. ‘That will remain to be seen.’

‘On what?’ she asked indignantly.

‘On whether I can suffer another of these weekends with your friends.’

‘If you love me, you will,’ she said coquettishly. She didn’t want to fight; they only ever seemed to argue when they were with her friends. Standing at the window, she looked down upon the stepped garden carved into the steep Tuscan hillside, the square white sun umbrellas like unfolded handkerchiefs from this elevated viewpoint. ‘Come and see this view.’

‘I like it well enough from here.’ She turned back to find him lying on the bed, his ankles crossed and hands clasped behind his head, watching her.

‘You’d love it.’

‘Frustratingly, I love you more.’

‘That’s because you’re a philistine. Anyone with any taste knows Florence is the most beautiful place in the world.’

He arched his eyebrow in that way he always did when she was being provocative. ‘You’re only saying that because you’re too unimaginative to consider anything that wasn’t inculcated into you by your snob mother. Real aesthetes know that the most beautiful place in the world is anywhere that has you in it.’