It was a horrible thought.

Time rippled along like a gentle stream. Zia did what had to be done at Bella Vista but the holiday cottages had been designed as a retirement business so, now she was in the rhythm, she had free time to play with.

Piero already filled her evenings and nights. On Fridays and weekends, she sometimes sat in the corner of his workshop, watching while he made a play house – in kit form, it looked to her, but he explained that the parts would be assembled on site. His drawing and measurements were on a board on his wall. Larch filled the workshop with its sweet scent and a haze of fine golden sawdust. When the machines weren’t roaring he had Formula 1 coverage playing on his laptop.

‘You follow Ferrari?’ she asked, one Sunday when his eyes kept being drawn from his nail gun to the race.

His eyes laughed. ‘I’m Italian so I’m tifoso – a fan. I didn’t let my time in the US or UK change that.’

At last Lucia began to respond to treatment, although Durante said on the phone that she was still fighting the remains of the infection. To help him out and improve her grasp of the local accent, Zia had told him to speak Italian and she’d stop him if she didn’t understand. He went on, ‘She wants to read but she can’t hold a book comfortably because of her surgery.’

Struck by an idea, Zia sat up. ‘What about her Kindle? She can hold that in one hand. Give me your cousin’s address and I’ll bring it over tomorrow. It’ll give me something useful to do.’ Bella Vista was beginning to feel solitary without Lucia, Durante or Ursula and Piero would be driving south to meet a buyer who supplied the busy restaurants of Rome and expected to be late back. It would be nice to do something more practical than sending daily texts to Durante for Lucia to read from her hospital bed.

‘Perfetto,’ exclaimed Durante and Zia put it on her calendar along with the cousin’s address. It would be the 4th of August, two whole weeks since Lucia had been taken away in the ambulance. She hurried off to take the Kindle from Lucia’s bedside drawer and put it on charge.

The next day saw her driving through Montelibertà and taking the winding road down the mountain until she reached the dual carriageway where she could whizz past the sunflower fields to Torgiano, close to Perugia. She was thrilled to arrive at the cousin’s white-rendered house and find Durante awaiting her.

‘Ciao, ciao!’ He managed a beaming smile as he kissed her cheeks though he looked drawn, had visibly lost weight and needed a haircut. ‘The doctors think she may be home in another week and now it would be good to receive brief visits from others. You want to come?’