“It’s the bell summoning the sisters to prayer, I suspect. Six o’clock.”

“Oh good heavens, we’re not supposed to join them, are we?”

“Of course not.” I smiled. “But it is infernally early to be woken, isn’t it?”

I put on my dressing gown and went to check on the girls, some of whom had slept through the din, while others were sitting up and voiced their complaints as soon as I appeared.

“That’s not fair, Miss Browning. How are we supposed to get any sleep if the blooming bells keep ringing all the time?”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do about bells, Daphne,” I said, smiling at her grumpy face. “They are part of life here. The people are very religious, you know. Some of them go to Mass every morning. And the sisters pray several times a day.”

“Golly, I’m glad I’m C of E, aren’t you?” Daphne prodded her roommate.

We breakfasted on freshly baked bread, with hard-boiled eggs and jam, plus milky coffee that the girls found intriguing.

“I’ve never had coffee before, miss,” one of them said. “My mum says it’s only for grown-ups. But it’s quite good, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. So is the bread here.”

After breakfast we set out, heading for the vaporetto stop outside the station. There we caught the Number One all the way up the Grand Canal. Now the girls were really impressed. They leaned out, taking snapshots, waving at gondoliers and discussing which of the palaces they’d like to own. I spotted the Palazzo Rossi, staring at the windows in the hope of seeing a face, but they remained shuttered against the heat.

We alighted at the San Marco stop and walked along the waterfront, where rows of gondolas bobbed at their moorings, until we reached the entrance to St Mark’s Square. The girls reacted as I had done ten years before, marvelling in the tall bell tower, the domes of the basilica, the coffee houses with their outdoor tables, still almost empty at ten in the morning. They sat and sketched, visited St Mark’s, then the Doge’s Palace. Finally, as I had done ten years earlier, we went to the little bridge on the waterfront, where they got a view of the Bridge of Sighs. They all thought it so romantic.

We returned to the convent for lunch, which was a large vegetable stew this time, then a rest before we went out for gelato and sketching. The next day I took them to the Accademia. As I paid for their entry tickets, I watched a group of students going into the next-door building that housed the academy itself. They carried portfolios, and they were laughing together as if they hadn’t a care in the world. That should have been me, I thought, then reminded myself that at least I’d had one year of instruction. Better than nothing. Better than those poor people who had no job at all, who had lost all hope.

“More paintings, miss?” Sheila complained as I led them into a room of works by old masters. “This old art is all so boring. It’s all saints and things.”