I watch for a while with great interest. It reminds me of the way birds preen and sing during courtship rituals. Ben glances across, and I arch my eyebrows appreciatively, congratulating him on what is, after all, a brilliant performance. He looks startled for a second and then there’s a reciprocal gleam of laughter in his eyes and that devastating, easy smile, the one that reveals his dimples.

“And so, now I have the two lovely cousins to myself,” Klaus says, pulling my attention back to him and drawing a giggle from Hero, who has dragged her own chair closer so that Klaus sits between us. He teases us and tells us stories as the sun dips lower and lower and the sky fades from orange to a deep violet blue. I lean comfortably back in my chair, half expecting to hear my mother hissing at me to sit up straight. I realize that hours and hours have passed without any comment on my behaviour or my manners. It feels dizzyingly liberating.

We light flickering candles in glass jars and the lemon drink is followed by earthenware tumblers of red wine, warm and spicy on my tongue. The two older men reach a crescendo in their argument, and the others wade in, while I try to keep up with the flow of words about artists I haven’t heard of before. They are so animated, so alive. The argument ends when one man leaps to his feet, and utters a stream of furious Italian, stalking away to whoops and cheers from the others. It couldn’t be further away from the stilted small talk I am used to.

Klaus laughs and translates some of the conversation for me. I lean forward, eager to hear more. It’s hard to explain the feeling of heat in my veins, the way that all these noisy people, talking so passionately about interesting things, makes me feel. It’s like when you come inside from the freezing cold and your limbs start to come awake again – an almost painful kind of relief.

Eventually we are interrupted by a jubilant exclamation from Uncle Leo. He greets Rosa, who bustles towards the table with a tray heaped with baskets of warm, cinder-crusted loaves of bread, fat green olives, tissue-paper-thin sheets of tender pink ham and meltingly soft cheese flecked with bright, green herbs. After several return trips to the kitchen, the table groans under the weight of all the food and we fall upon it with enthusiasm. I bite into a tomato, so sweet and ripe that you can eat it like an apple; the juice runs down my fingers, leaving me sticky and gleeful as a small child.

By the time we finish eating, the sky is a blanket of stars and I can’t shake the feeling that this is all some wonderful dream. Some of this must show in my face, because Filomena’s eyes light on me.