By late afternoon Lucia and Durante were indoors, Fiorella had gone home and Zia was lounging on the terrace. Her Kindle was in her hands but she was gazing down into the vineyard and wondering how large the grapes had grown when she caught a movement in her peripheral vision. A woman of around fifty, dressed in stylishly cropped trousers, her glossy hair upswept into a clasp at the top of her head, was climbing the terrace steps, peeping into the kitchen and then the main terrace doors.

As Zia didn’t recognise the woman, she called, ‘Buongiorno.’

The woman looked round, shading her eyes. ‘Buongiorno.’ An infinitesimal pause then she added, ‘Sono Ilaria. Sono la moglie di Gerardo.’ I’m Ilaria. I’m the wife of Gerardo.

Zia gazed at her in shock. As the wife of Lucia’s nephew, Ilaria might easily be paying a family visit. Or … she might be there to challenge Zia. ‘Oh,’ she said.

Ilaria stepped nearer, her smile polite. ‘Zia-Lucia?’

‘Yes, I’m Zia.’ Zia offered Ilaria a seat, giving her wits a chance to gather themselves. ‘I didn’t know if I’d ever meet you.’

Ilaria clasped her hands, making her rings flash in the sun. ‘I doubt Gerardo intended it.’ She gazed at the view for several seconds. Then she turned to Zia with a rueful twist to her lips. ‘When a husband receives letters he does not share and his telephone record shows calls to England, a wife wonders.’

‘Oh!’ Zia breathed. ‘You thought …’

Ilaria shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

Zia almost laughed at the idea that she’d be mistaken for Gerardo’s ‘other woman’. ‘I never wrote to him,’ she said instead. ‘It was someone trying to make mischief for me. I’ve tried not to interfere with your family but, at the same time, I wanted to know the truth about myself.’

Ilaria nodded, her long earrings keeping time. ‘He told me. I knew he had an English girlfriend once. Gerardo and I, we have known each other since school, you understand? The girlfriend left and later we married. Gerardo, he has not a strong personality. I am tough enough for two and we love each other.’ Softly, she added, ‘You cannot help who you love.’

Zia thought of Piero and said, ‘No.’ Presumably this was the woman who’d sent Riccardo to fetch Gerardo from the tavern. He probably liked being looked after like a child, Zia thought.

A silence grew. At last, Ilaria said, ‘I am not angry to know you exist but I am not happy.’