I retreat into my room and wash and dress as hastily as I can. Pulling on a crumpled pale pink day dress, I lean over the mirror and tackle my long, unruly hair, stabbing at it almost at random with the pins scattered across the dressing table. My face in the mirror is a little flushed, and I take several deep breaths. My life has been so small, so monotonous, so endlessly unvarying for so long, that the utter newness of the day stretching ahead of me is almost overwhelming. Almost. I grin, and the girl in the mirror grins back at me, her nose scrunching up a little under a peppering of freckles, her eyes gleaming with naked excitement.

I have no idea what time it is, but I assume it must be late. I make my way swiftly, giddily along the long hallway and down the stairs, pushing one of the doors in the entrance way open at random.

Beyond it is a huge room with a high, dark-beamed ceiling. There is a grey stone fireplace stretching across one wall that is big enough to stand in, and several hard, blue sofas and a well-stocked drinks trolley as well as a gramophone. As in my room the walls are white, and the floors tiled, spread with more rugs. This must be the living room, though it doesn’t seem particularly well lived in. I listen carefully but all I can hear is the sullen ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner and a look at its face informs me that it is past midday.

Undeterred I push through another door and find myself in the kitchen, where a shrunken woman in a headscarf is bent over some dough.

“Oh, hello!” I exclaim. “Sorry, I’m a bit lost.” The woman smiles at me and bustles over to the side where she picks up a cup and saucer, pouring thick, black coffee into the cup from a silver pot on the stove.

She shuffles over to me, her footsteps tiny but brisk, like a little bird, and she holds out the saucer, which I take. “Thank you,” I say, as she regards me through eyes set deep like dark currants in her wrinkled face.

“Il giardino,” she says, gesturing to a door set into a high stone arch at the front of the room. “Filomena and Leo there,” she adds in careful, heavily accented English.

“Oh, thank you,” I say again. “I mean, grazie.”

The woman reaches up and, to my surprise, pats me softly on the cheek. “Prego,” she says and then, as I turn to leave through the door, she makes a clucking noise to stop me and pulls a cloth back from on top of a basket full of warm, golden rolls. The smell of them is enough to set my stomach growling viciously.