She read and reread, considering her options. She could write – but Harry could ignore a letter. Or Ursula might use part of a day off to drive over if asked. But, no, Zia should handle this in person, she quickly realised. This was her backstory she was trying to unravel. How could she know how Harry would react to her when she didn’t know what happened to sever his friendship with Vicky in 1999? She had faded childhood memories of a kind man but that wasn’t much of a guide for more than two decades later.

By the next morning, she was tired from lying awake thinking about the blank patches in the painting of her life. It was the Saturday of the opening of the Montelibertà Festival and when Lucia invited her to go, she jumped at the chance.

‘Durante is helping some of the musicians,’ Lucia explained. ‘Two of his friends are in a jazz band and play at the jazz festival in Orvieto every year. Durante enjoys being involved.’ She pulled a face. ‘As long as it’s not me hauling around big speakers in this heat, I don’t care.’

Durante had been gone for some time when Zia and Lucia drove into town. Lucia knew the owners of Caffé Roma and had cheekily reserved a table looking out onto the piazza. Zia grinned as she sat down and inspected the crowd gathering on the cobbled square. ‘Best seats in the house.’ It was so hot that even she was pleased the entire table was shaded by an ivory-coloured parasol.

Lucia produced a lacy fan and began to waft it before her face, her expressive features creased in delight as she gazed at the raised stage where the market usually stood. ‘From here we can see everything.’

The stage was shaded with an enormous green canopy and bulky black speakers lined the sides like a row of bodyguards. All sizes and shapes of garden chairs were being arranged to face the stage and marshals were fighting a losing battle trying to encourage their owners to set them out in rows. Zia heard waves of loud, laughing Italian, as people shared beer and lemonade from cool boxes, waving and calling to friends. The pigeons that usually crowded the cobbles lined nearby rooftops, maybe rubbing their wings together at the thought of all the crumbs being dropped for them to peck up later. She caught sight of Durante bumping a sack barrow of unwieldy boxes, roaring with laughter when the top box flipped off, spilling cables like fighting snakes on the cobbles.

Every table in Caffé Roma was taken so they had a wait for their food while a hubbub of tuning and testing noises came from the stage. The jazz band was to be on first, according to the flyer they’d found on their table.