He signalled for the waiter and paid the bill; she sat looking across the gently rocking masts of yachts and dinghies in the port; beside them the English family were collecting cameras, bags, a white “woollie”: the boy had a shrimping net.

‘Too idiotic, wasn’t it?’ she had said. ‘To go shrimping. Without a net?’

Marcus suddenly took Leni’s hand in both his. ‘I’m really, truly, sorry. I love you. I do love you. There’s no one else. Ever.’

She slung the Army Surplus over her shoulder, smiled, not trusting herself to speak. ‘Fantastic,’ she said. Coughed gently. ‘We must go. Minerva maybe will be awake now.’

He followed her through the tables, colliding with the English family who were on their way out.

‘… But you’re ever so patriotic at home,’ said the woman.

‘Well I am! Course I am.’ The man hitched khaki shorts over his paunch. ‘I just don’t like being taken for a Brit. Get ripped off. They’ve forgotten all about Dunkirk, of course.’

Leni had reached the main street as he caught her up.

Marcus stood uncertainly at the drawing-room windows looking across the terrace. Cane chairs, low tables, ferns, white hydrangeas banked at the top of the steps leading down to the lawn: at the far end, by the frog fountain, Minerva in a long Planters’ Chair, feet crossed, glasses on, tugging wool through a small canvas square. She saw him, looked over her glasses, raised a hand.

‘Hi! I’m here. Grandma Moses with her tapestry. Come on over, it’s cooler by the water.’

He sat beside her, kicked off his espadrilles. ‘Quite a day,’ he said.

Minerva pulled a long thread towards her. ‘Quite a day. Did you see him?’

‘No. I didn’t go up. Leni did. Took him some peaches.’

‘Peaches! He’s feeding through a tube.’

‘Yes. Well. She wasn't quite prepared for that … nor was I’

‘He looks a mess, right?’

‘She said so. “Invisible Man”. All bandages.’

‘Big wound.’ She lifted the canvas square. ‘Pretty? Don’t you think?’

‘Very. What is it?’

‘It’s to cover a brick.’

‘A brick?’

‘For a door-stop. Don’t you think that is stunningly original? It’s beginners’ stuff; if I get good at it and don’t throw the whole thing into the garbage tomorrow, I might just progress to a chair-back, or a cushion. It soothes me, and I need soothing right now. Where’s Leni?’

‘In our room. Lying down for a bit. It shook her up, seeing him.’

‘I can imagine. Shook me up too. I had the morning there arranging how to get him back to Rome. The day after tomorrow we go. He’ll be fine. In time. One of the few advantages of being who I am, Marcus, is that I can get people running and things get done. Money, honey, really does speak. Especially in Italy. In Italy it not only speaks, it hollers.’