‘I see why Lucia was reticent,’ she said quietly. ‘She loves him and doesn’t want to acknowledge his weaknesses.’ She gave a humourless laugh. ‘I suppose I’d harboured a secret hope that if I ever discovered my father, he’d be a wonderful man who’d welcome me, introduce me proudly to the family, give me grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. He’d help me adjust to who I really am and bring context to how I was created. For some reason it never occurred to me he’d have wanted me aborted.’ A tear glistened but she didn’t let it fall. ‘Seems unlikely I’ll be able to claim Italian citizenship via my father if I’m his shameful little secret.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured, wishing he knew her well enough to comfort her with a hug.

She drew in a long even breath and asked with forced brightness, ‘What are my grandparents like these days? Do you know them?’

He rasped his stubble. He didn’t bother shaving ahead of a day in his workshop. ‘Ah, yes. Didn’t Lucia tell you? Fiorella helps in their house.’

Horror swept across the features she turned on him. ‘My grandmother comes to their house? Holy shit. I feel faint.’ But she didn’t look faint. She looked upset and edgy as if she needed to race around and crash things together.

Here at least he could offer some positivity. ‘She and Roberto have moved with the times, I’d say. I like them.’

It didn’t seem to comfort her. ‘Thanks for being candid,’ she said dismally. ‘I hope I haven’t made you too uncomfortable.’ Then her brow furrowed as if struck by a thought. ‘You wouldn’t have met Tori?’

He smiled. ‘If you’re thirty then I would have been eight and living in California the summer she was here.’

‘Right. Of course.’ She paused. Slowly, she extracted a photo from her pocket. ‘Durante made me this print.’ She laid it on the table and turned it to face him.

Curious, Piero examined the photo. It was typical of a new print of an old picture: faded colours overlaid with a fresh gloss. The girl – young woman – who gazed back at him was very English-looking with pale skin and freckles. Her fair hair curved back from her face like flower petals and her blue-striped blazer fell open either side of a large baby bump hugged by pale pink dungarees. Wow. She barely looked sixteen, let alone eighteen. She would have made the ideal cover model for the tear-jerking novels he remembered his mother reading: a woeful girl beseeching life to improve, abandoned by someone who should have been on her side.

‘Seeing this must be emotional,’ he said, actually feeling a lump in his throat.