“Hello,” a voice calls and I turn in my seat to see two figures moving towards us. One is a boy, lean, dark-haired and dark-eyed, who walks with a swagger. He is perhaps a year or two older than me, and as he steps forward to shake my hand he gives me a slightly crooked and perfectly charming smile. I notice that he has a small beauty mark at the corner of his mouth.

“Ah, Signora Bea,” he says and his voice is warm and low, with a subtle Germanic accent. “I am delighted to meet you at last. Hero has told us so much about you.” He nods to Hero who is gazing at him with worship writ large in her eyes.

“I am Klaus,” he continues and I realize he is still holding my hand. He lets go of it, but slowly, as though he regrets having to do so. It’s a practised move, I think, as smooth as a beeswax-polished floor. “And this” – Klaus gestures to the girl beside him – “is Ursula, my sister.”

Ursula nods coolly. She is beautiful in an intimidating sort of way, with her brother’s dark hair and dark eyes and a wide, sulky mouth painted with a slash of red lipstick. She is several inches shorter than me and slim as a reed. Her hair is cut into a short, severe bob, the strands at the front tickling against her high cheekbones. Her emerald-green dress clings lovingly to her body, making me feel woefully unsophisticated.

Klaus accepts a drink from my uncle and pulls up the chair beside mine, shuffling it so that we are sitting close enough that our arms brush lightly against each other. Ursula drops into a seat beside Filomena.

“So,” Klaus says, “you are from England. Is it true that all those English country houses are haunted?”

I look into his laughing eyes and find myself telling him stories about the hen-hearted ghosts at Langton who seem only to appear in front of the most susceptible ninnies, and the scrapes that Eustace the dog has been in.

Hero then demands a retelling of the toad story and I follow this up with an admission of several other well-played pranks.

As we are talking, several other people drift over and join the party: two older men who sit in a corner, arguing in low tones and making dramatic gestures at one another; a willowy blonde girl with an air of extreme cultivated fragility; and a woman about the same age as Filomena with bronze skin and her hair tucked into a red turban, who carries herself with a liquid grace. More artists who have stumbled into the haven created by Filomena.