Taking a seat on the terrace where bees bumbled around twilight-blue stephanotis, Zia opened her phone calendar and counted ninety days from when she’d arrived in Italy. It took her to the 14th of September. Accounting for the recent four full days spent on UK soil meant the eighteenth would see the end to her permitted stay in Italy, just over six weeks away. Then she had to stay out of Italy for at least another ninety days. Permesso di Soggiorno took three to six months to come through and it was hard to decide whether to apply without a clear idea of what the step afterwards would be.

She stared out over the valley where a handful of workers scurried between the vines like ants, working their way downhill. It was the end of their working day judging by the mountains shimmering blue-green beneath the watercolour sky of late afternoon.

In a few weeks she’d be leaving.

The reality sank through her like wet cement, dragging with it her joy at Lucia’s progress on the road to recovery.

Piero. She’d have to leave him too. Just as she’d long ago fallen hard for Italy, now she’d fallen for Piero.

There was no other explanation for the way her heart bungee-jumped whenever they met. He’d made no more remarks about not wanting to be entangled. They spent time together whenever possible. Sex was off the scale as they learned more about what drove each other crazy.

If only she had some certainty about how best to plan … her stomach performed a sudden pirouette. An idea had sprung, fully formed, into her mind; an idea she hadn’t considered before but which now seemed blindingly obvious. She revolved it in her mind, assailed by a thousand doubts that it could really be that easy.

Perhaps she’d discuss it with Piero and see if he saw any flaws she’d missed.

Up the hill, Il Rifugio almost in sight, Piero willed the car in front to stop dawdling. ‘Come on, I’ve had a shitty day.’ The traffic in Rome had been the usual nightmare, the buyer had been difficult to enthuse and Salvatore had phoned asking him to call in at the vineyard on his way home. When he got there, he’d found that, out of the blue, his father had decided to set a limit on how long they’d keep the vineyard on the open market before returning to Binotto’s offer. The following heated conversation had ended with Salvatore upset and Piero needing to mend a fence.

At least Zia had volunteered to have a meal waiting for him. He liked knowing she was in his house, the window open to the buzz and whirr of insects and the breeze rustling the dry grass. It made his stomach skip about.