Tiredness fell away from her like an old, heavy coat once she had locked the door and moved across the familiar room, among cherished, personal things. Bruna had unpacked and put everything away. The shutters were closed; her bed, under its yellow silk canopy, made down; a crystal jar of cornflowers glowing on the swagged dressing-table among pots, bottles and silver-backed brushes.

She put her wine glass down, sat heavily on the little stool, eased her feet from her shoes, stared at her face in the oval mirror.

Weary, yes. Lines at the eyes, at the side of her mouth, across her brow. She ran her fingers through her hair, pulled it roughly back from her forehead, turned into profile and saw the slight sag under her chin, the tendon in her neck running from shoulder to ear, the freckles scattered lightly on her hand. She shrugged and reached for her glass, draining it in one. Age. Age creeping on. The inevitable process, Archie had said, and at sixty-eight what else could one expect? A general wearing down. One was not indestructible like the Bonnard in the drawing-room, or even this dressing-table, the chaise-longue on gilded legs, the great pine outside the window, the shadowy blue hills across the bay. None of these would fade or suddenly disintegrate. Unless someone took an axe to them, or burned them with fire, they would last for centuries still, and silently mock human frailty. She put out her hand, thrust it gently among the tight blue heads of the cornflowers. Frailty. You have only days. I, months. Perhaps.

Abruptly she rose and crossed on stockinged feet to her little day-room; boudoir it had once been called, but that had connotations of the courtesan and she really couldn’t have ever been called that, however cruel the tongues had been. On her desk a small pile of letters, none of which, from the handwriting, interested her enough to open immediately, and three messages, in Bruna’s tumbling scribble, which were local and could wait. Or be ignored. The room was circular, with high windows overlooking the bay and out towards the sea. She pushed the shutters open and felt the late sun fold her in comforting warmth, smelled the resin of the trees and the damp, green scent of the watered lawns rising up in the still afternoon. Leaning over the iron balcony she looked down over the trees to the still diamond-sparkling sea and the white triangular sails of little yachts tacking idly to and fro; a man on water-skis described a graceful arc, swung out, and was lost to her sight below the rocky cliff which fell away steeply through the trees beyond the path which bordered the emerald lawns, as Tonnino came slowly tramping up towards the house, a hoe over his shoulder and basket of bright pea-pods on his arm.

‘Bonjour, Tonnino,’ she called.

He stopped, looked up, shading his eyes, saw her, removed his straw hat. ‘Bonjour, Madame.’ He raised the basket. ‘Two kilos. The second picking.’