A skinny cat slunk out from a side alley.

“Mew?” it asked hopefully.

“Oh, look at that poor thing,” one of the girls said. “It’s so thin. Can we take it with us? It needs a saucer of milk.”

I looked back at the girl and saw the hopeful eyes of myself at eighteen. “Margaret, I’m afraid you’ll find that this is a city full of stray cats. People here don’t value animals the way we do.”

“It smells bad here, miss,” the annoying Sheila complained. “Does the water come out of the canals? Do you think we’ll catch some disease?”

“We shall drink only bottled water and be careful with unpeeled vegetables and fruit. Otherwise, we should be quite safe,” I replied, proud of my calmness. I stopped to read a street name on a crumbling red-painted building. “Oh yes. Nearly there now. Buck up, everyone.”

Have I made a mistake coming back here? I asked myself. Am I seeing the past through rose-tinted glasses? Was it always smelly and dirty and I never noticed?

We turned into a blind alley, so narrow that the girls had to walk in single file. There was a distinct smell of bad drains.

“It should be here.” I consulted the letter. “Convent of Mater Domino? . . .”

Two small boys came out of a doorway, clutching a football. “Scusi. Dove si trova Mater Domino?” I asked them.

They stared at the girls in their school uniforms as if they were creatures from another planet and pointed silently to the end of the alley. “Il primo a destra,” one of them said.

“Grazie.” I turned back to Miss Frobisher. “It’s just around the corner on the right.”

They turned into an even narrower alleyway. We scanned the buildings one by one. Then at the far end I noticed a small plaque saying Mater Domino on a grey stone wall, with a cross above. And in the middle of that wall was a massive wooden door.

“This must be it,” I said, a trifle dubiously. “I must say they don’t make their presence well known.”

“You do the talking, Miss Browning,” Miss Frobisher said. “You have knowledge of the language, don’t you? I only have Latin, which I am sure is no longer any use.”

“I have been studying Italian at home, just for my own benefit, Miss Frobisher. I’m not sure how proficient I am.”

“You made those boys just now understand you.”

I had to smile. “That wasn’t too hard, with all that waving and gesturing.”

Beside the door was an old-fashioned bell pull. I tugged on it and heard a distant jangling.

“It looks awful,” one of the girls whispered. “Why are there no windows?”

“I’ve heard what they do in convents,” Sheila’s voice came again. “They’ll try to convert us, and if we don’t agree, something terrible will happen to us. They brick people up in walls and toss them down wells.”

“Don’t be so silly, Sheila.” Miss Frobisher spoke up now. I could tell she was making a supreme effort to be calm and reassuring. “You are frightening your schoolmates unnecessarily. I’m sure it looks perfectly fine inside.”