‘I’m a bad girl, according to Steph,’ Ursula grumbled as they stepped through the open door to an interior of red-tiled floor and white-painted walls. ‘Wow. This place is bigger than it looked from the outside.’

Zia agreed as she gazed at the many rows of wooden tables going back from where they stood. ‘Lucia said thirty years ago it was a bar all the young people came to. It looks like a tavola calda now, where you choose your meal from the counter and pay for it then wait for it to be ready.’

The lady behind the till nodded and murmured, ‘Buona sera.’

‘Buona sera,’ they chorused, then chose pasta from the heated cabinet and salad and bread from the chilled one. Food plated and drinks poured, they bore their trays to a table near the door to a garden where cane parasols were threaded with fairy lights. The garden was pretty but Zia wanted to sit in what used to be the bar where Tori worked.

‘Looks popular with students and tourists,’ Ursula observed, looking around at the teeming, noisy tables as she put down her tray.

‘It’s good value. The whole bill was less than twenty-five euros.’ Zia tasted her pasta, enjoying the crusty baked topping speckled with herbs. ‘I wonder what the place was like thirty years ago.’ As they ate, she gazed at the long stone bar with glasses racked above and tried to mentally animate the two young people frozen in time in Lucia’s photograph album – the English rose being chatted up by a local Romeo. Going on dates. English rose hurrying to finish work. Local Romeo waiting outside for her when the bar closed late in the evenings. Afternoons in Lucia and Durante’s garden. Two young bodies meeting in the sun, screened from the neighbours by cypresses and roses.

Contraception failure.

Panic.

Abandoned baby.

A lump grew in her throat and she had to put down her fork.

Ursula’s voice came, warm with compassion. ‘You need to work stuff out,’ she said, without having to be told why Zia had stopped eating. ‘Drop me at Perugia Airport on Wednesday morning for the flight to Stansted. I’ll travel by train to Brighton ready for my first client at the tattoo parlour at nine on Thursday. Easy.’ She gave Zia’s forearm a stroke. ‘We’ve prepared for this. You packed to stay a month or two if you decided to. Do it. You have unfinished business here.’