At the first sight of Durante’s car Zia raced across the terrace to hold the door open while Durante helped his wife from the vehicle. Throat clogging to see Lucia still looking pallid and drawn, stooping protectively over her abdomen as if worried something would fall out, all Zia could offer was a beaming smile and welling eyes.

‘Ciao, Zia-Lucia,’ Lucia whispered. Her smile was pained but at least it was there. ‘I felt every bump in the road. And there are many.’

‘You do look as if you need to rest,’ Zia said sympathetically. She and Durante took an arm each to help her up the terrace steps and then indoors to a sofa. When she laid herself down with exaggeratedly ginger movements and closed her eyes, Zia kissed her forehead and melted away.

Zia was hovering on the terrace when Durante reappeared and pulled her into a hug. He said, ‘She will improve but it will take time, the doctor said. She is back to sleep.’

‘You’re shattered too,’ she choked. ‘Are you hungry?’

‘I could eat,’ he answered vaguely.

She gave him a squeeze. ‘You’ve lost weight. Why don’t I make you some quick pasta? We’ll eat together then you can flake out.’

He hesitated. ‘Do you mind if I eat beside her? I feel as if I must watch. There are no doctors now.’

Zia could understand anxiety after such a grave illness. ‘Of course.’ She rustled up pasta with pine nuts and tomatoes and had to wake Durante, already settled on a chair and footstool in the salon.

‘Mi dispiace,’ he apologised, scrubbing his face in an obvious effort to wake himself before taking the fork and plate.

Zia left the couple alone, thinking wistfully of previous meals on the terrace with Lucia and Durante and Piero dropping by … something he’d conspicuously omitted to do for the four days since their confrontation. Visions of his clean-cut face, blank with astonishment, presumably that Gerardo had spilled the beans, then grim with fury, spoiled her lunch. Afterwards, to turn her mind to things other than her tantrum she went into the office and reminded herself of the next guest changeover.

Tomorrow, Thursday, Villino Il Pino’s current guests would leave. The new lot wouldn’t arrive until Friday, giving Zia plenty of time to service Pino. She made a supermarket shopping list then drifted outside again seeing, through the salon window, that both Lucia and Durante appeared to be sleeping. Lonely and suffering from a feeling of anticlimax she went into her apartment, switched on the air conditioning unit she’d bought for the bedroom and tried to get Ursula on her lunch break. She made it an ordinary phone call as the parlour premises had a ‘no video calls’ rule in case a door opened and the caller got a flash of naked body parts being inked.