‘He probably isn’t coming,’ Primo said cheerfully. ‘I’m not his favourite person since I poached Tordini.’

Rico Tordini was a brilliant electronics inventor, claimed by both brothers, whose business interests were in the same line. Primo had secured him for his own firm.

‘Luke says you stabbed him in the back,’ Hope reminded Primo.

‘Not a bit. It’s true he spotted Tordini first, but I made him a better offer.’

‘My dear, it’s a bad business when brothers fall out.’

‘Don’t worry, Mamma. Luke will get his chance of revenge, and he’ll take it.’

He spoke lightly. The running battle between himself and Luke had lasted years now, and provided spice to their lives. Without it they would both have felt something was missing.

Luke finally put in an appearance when the meal was almost over.

‘E, Inglese,’ Primo said, raising his glass in jeering fashion.

To call Luke an Englishman was Primo’s favourite form of insult, a way of reminding him that he was the only son in this Italian family who was completely English.

‘Better than being neither one thing nor the other,’ Luke said with a grin, referring to Primo’s dual ancestry and the fact that he was liable to ‘switch sides’ without warning.

‘I’m glad you came,’ Hope told him.

‘Naturally.’ Luke raised a glass sardonically in Primo’s direction. ‘I had to make sure we were really getting rid of him.’

Yet it was Luke who drove Primo to the airport the next day.

‘I’m coming too,’ Hope told them. ‘Someone has to stop you two killing each other.’

‘No fear of that,’ Luke said lightly. ‘It’s more fun to plot a subtle revenge. That’s the Italian way.’

‘And what would an Inglese know of the Italian way?’ Primo demanded.

‘Only what he’s learned from his mongrel brother.’

As Hope and Luke stood together watching the plane climb, she couldn’t help giving a little sigh.