Tacitly agreeing that the best way of getting past the embarrassing episode was by pretending it’d never happened, after a rapid change of sheets Stephan and Ursula offered to treat Zia to chips on the Palace Pier. The sun peeped out between rain showers as they claimed three blue-and-white striped deckchairs in the centre of the pier, the churning sea visible through the gaps in the old boards. Close by, the dodgem cars clashed and flashed, screaming tourists clung on to the twister and the Horror Hotel ghost train while small kids wailed on the cup and saucer ride. The sugary smell of doughnuts fought with greasy fish and chips and an undernote of weed. Seagulls stretching their wings on the wind cried, ‘Aar!’ like the pirates they were with hooked beaks ready to snatch snacks from unwary hands. It was all comfortingly typical of the British seaside, like the teenage girls they could see inshore on the pebbly beach, obstinately wearing bikinis as if the sea breeze wasn’t freezing them. Children paddling in the shallows were garbed far more sensibly in wet suits.

Snatches of conversation rose over the blustering breeze.

‘Mummy, I want to go to the arcade!’

‘No, not the stupid machines, let’s go on the roller coaster!’

‘Do you think I’m made of money? Those things cost a fortune …’

Zia, Ursula and Stephan settled companionably shoulder to shoulder eating salty chips with wooden forks and sheltering pints of lager in plastic glasses between their feet so they wouldn’t blow over. Zia recounted her unexpected meeting with Gerardo.

Ursula listened, a chip poised halfway to her mouth, blonde forelock blown up above her head like a question mark. ‘Did you not tell him who you are?’

‘I froze,’ Zia admitted. ‘I’m getting really worried about how much I could upset his wife and kids.’

‘You’re his kid, too,’ Ursula reminded her, though she didn’t sound as convinced as her words suggested.

Zia crunched a particularly crispy chip, her favourite kind. ‘I’m here to see Harry. I’ve begun a kind of timeline for my backstory from the letters and what Lucia’s told me. I want to see if I can get him to fill in the blanks. He’s living in Chichester so I can go straight through on the train.’

Ursula’s blue eyes lit up with enthusiasm. ‘I have a day off tomorrow. I could drive you. Stephan’s working.’

Zia beamed, pleasure flooding through her at the chance for them to spend a day together. ‘If you don’t mind giving up your day off, that would be brilliant.’

‘And how did you leave Piero?’ Ursula queried, wiping up the last of her ketchup with a chip. ‘Have you done the deed again?’