It was peaceful. At first, he’d missed Nicoletta but he’d never missed the pressure she brought with her. Reflecting on this, he was careless as he swung a piece of oak. The end collided with the lantern roof waiting for collection by Antonio’s men … and a crack appeared across the glass as if dashed there by an unseen hand. ‘Balls!’ he exploded into the empty air.

‘Oops!’ said a female voice. He spun around to see Zia standing in the doorway wearing red shorts and a black top that showed red bra straps, her hair piled up on top of her head. The corners of her mouth twitched. ‘You swear in English?’

He leant the length of oak against a bench and smiled at her. ‘I left America at an age when saying “H-E-double-hockey-sticks” was daring but in England I had a colleague who swore like a trooper. English has great swearwords.’ Courteously he added, ‘Sorry. Didn’t know I had a guest.’

‘As I’m an uninvited one I can hardly complain.’ She smiled and drifted a few steps further into his space. ‘Il tuo inglese è migliore del mio italiano.’ Your English is better than my Italian.

It seemed an odd thing for her to visit him to talk about but he answered her in Italian. ‘In America we spoke English everywhere except home, where we spoke Italian. When we came back here to live, our parents wanted us to keep our English up so we switched round – English at home and Italian outside it. We visited either the UK or the US every year and there are always tourists to talk to in Montelibertà. But your Italian’s very good.’

She gave a modest shrug. ‘Conversation helps a lot. I used to chat to an Italian woman in Brighton.’ She switched back to English. ‘Bad luck about the glass.’

Ruefully, he examined the cracked pane. ‘It’s being picked up on Wednesday so there isn’t time for new glass to be delivered. I’ll have to take a long lunch hour on Monday to sprint to the industrial zone in Perugia and pick some up.’

She’d leaned her behind against a workbench and crossed her bare legs at the ankles. She’d been wearing black and red the first time he saw her and the combination looked good. Her sunglasses were hooked in the front of her top, drawing his eye to an inch of cleavage. ‘Perugia’s on our list of places to visit,’ she said. ‘The old city on the hilltop’s picturesque and Ursula’s never been so we’re going to park at the bottom and take the Minimetrò. Where’s the industrial zone in relation to that?’

He noted she was sufficiently familiar with Perugia to know the Minimetrò, the unmanned passenger cars that coasted up the steep rails to the city of Perugia. ‘Not far. Just off the RA6.’