Zia plummeted onto a small grey sofa, thankful she no longer had to hold herself together. ‘Holy hell. I feel like someone put me through the spin dryer.’

Ursula curled up beside her. ‘Do you think she’s the same Lucia Costa your mum knew? Did you feel any connection?’

‘A tall order to know from one meeting.’ Zia fought to even out her breathing. ‘What bond could I sense with someone I met when I was a baby, thirty years ago? We’ve probably driven for three days for nothing and I’ve interviewed for a front-desk position in a property management company in Montelibertà – which looks ghastly, by the way – and fibbed about already having applied for residency.’ She kicked off her interview shoes and pulled up her interview dress to allow the air to cool her. ‘Maybe we should have tried harder to track down Harry and ask him.’

‘Yeah, rude of him not to still be living at the Exmouth address he wrote to your mum from over twenty years ago. Anyway,’ Ursula mused, ‘his old letters gave us Montelibertà as a starting point. Google can find only one Lucia Costa currently in the area – isn’t it useful that Italian women don’t take their husband’s surnames? She speaks English. She looks the right age to have been an adult when you were a baby. She and her husband run holiday cottages in an Italian paradise and we’ve enjoyed a fab road trip across France and Switzerland to get here. And the interview for the ghastly job was only a fact-finding mission for if you do decide to try and move out here so why worry?’

Spirits lifting at this pragmatic view, Zia nodded. ‘True. We’ve seen everything from cities to farms to mountains and stayed in cute hotels in Nancy and Lucerne. The worst that can happen is that we’ll drive home again at the end of two weeks, no wiser.’

‘Hey, now!’ Ursula wagged a manicured finger. ‘Don’t you be telling me you’re not going to try and talk to Lucia.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ But Zia’s belly did a wild dive off the high board at the thought. If Lucia was the wrong Lucia Costa then Zia’s enquiries could be easily brushed aside. But what if she was the right one? She’d know why Vicky Chalmers had once fetched Zia from Montelibertà. Part of Zia yearned to know but what if it proved hard to hear? Her memories of Vicky, the mum who’d died far too young, were golden. How would she feel if fresh knowledge tarnished them beyond redemption?

A knock fell on the front door. With a creak, it swung ajar and Piero Domenicali was revealed, his stunned gaze zeroing in on her bare legs where she’d hitched up the hem of her dress. Mortified, she scrambled to cover herself.