The elderly woman behind the counter was adding to the general din by yelling an order to the kitchen, where her husband and a teenage boy were hard at work in the ferocious heat of ovens the size of tombs. Then she saw the two men who had just come in and her face became studiously blank.

'Giosue here?' asked the older and taller of the pair.

He was dressed in designer slacks and a tight-fitting sweater which revealed his taut, muscled frame to advantage.

'Eh, oh!' the woman called to the back of the shop. 'And these pizzettel'

The other man reached over the counter and took one of the golden rice balls stacked on a plate. He was wearing jeans and a smartly pressed sports jacket over an open-necked shirt.

'Good/ he said appreciatively, biting into the arancia.

'What do you want?' the old woman asked.

'A double cone with pistachio and chocolate/ returned the first man in dialect as thick as her own. 'Oh, and a scoop of raspberry, what the hell.'

'We don't have ice-cream.'

The man looked shocked.

'You don't?'

He turned to his companion.

'They don't have ice-cream, they don't have Giosue. So what the fuck do they have?'

The other swallowed a mouthful of rice before replying.

'They have problems/ he said, shaking his head.

The old woman made a face.

'Eh, problems! Of course we have problems, and so many!'

The first man flicked his forefinger at her face.

'Ah, but you have problems you don't even know about yet. Maybe you have ice-cream too, without knowing it.'

'Maybe they have Giosue/ the other man put in.

At this point the woman's husband emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a filthy towel. He was old too, just like his wife, and the neighbour's kid who was helping out was too young to be any help in a situation like this. Once upon a time he could have seen scum like this off the premises without any trouble, but not any longer. He knew it, and so did they.