Was this what you wanted, dear Aunt Lettie? she thought. You wanted your great-niece to have a place of her own, where she could put her worries aside? This reminded her that she had yet to fulfil the reason she came in the first place, to scatter Aunt Lettie’s ashes. Now it made sense that she might want them scattered in the canal outside her window. But Caroline wasn’t quite ready to do it yet.

She telephoned her grandmother, describing the flat. “And I have found out what two of the keys were for so far. But the little silver key is still a mystery. I have looked all over the flat, and there is no lock that would fit this tiny key. So I have to assume it was for a box she took with her.”

Instead of going out to dinner, she had bought a tin of minestrone soup, which she now ate with more bread and some cheese. The one item she hadn’t acquired was an electric heater, and the room was becoming uncomfortably cold. She closed the big curtains, noting the moth holes. Another thing that would need replacing if she decided to keep this place. Then she discovered an old stone hot water bottle in the bathroom cupboard—the sort one saw in museums—and boiled water for it. The bed became pleasantly warm, and she turned in early, lying staring up at the ceiling and trying to take in everything that had happened: the flat, the old Da Rossi woman who had glared at her with hate in her eyes, her grandson Luca. She would try not to think about him, although he seemed to have been remarkably pleasant about her possession of the top floor. Maybe he was just deciding on the best strategy to remove her. Maybe his lawyers were already working on a way to disprove her lease. People were not always trustworthy, as she knew from Josh. Why did Luca have to be so damned charming?

That night she had a strange dream. She dreamed of a little girl playing the piano. Was that the girl whose clothes were still neatly folded in the bottom drawer? And how did Aunt Lettie know her? Maybe the morning and one of the drawers or cupboards would shed some light on the mystery.