Now, ironically, she was going to Italy after all. But not to Rome or Florence, the centres of art. Her new home was a villa on the Amalfi coast where the cliffs plunged dizzyingly down to the sea.

Anything was worth it, she told herself, if she could still take care of the old man who had offered her a home after her parents died when she was eight. They had been strangers, not having seen each other for five years.

‘Hello, I’m Sam,’ he’d said, refusing to have any truck with that ‘talking down to kids nonsense’, as he had called it. And Sam he’d been ever since.

They had been poor, and life had been a struggle, but they loved each other, and when Sam’s health had failed all she’d cared about was looking after him. For a while she had had a boyfriend, Gavin, who had dazzled her with his handsome looks, but she had broken up with him when he made it clear there was no place for Sam in their lives.

Hoping to win a little money, she had applied to enter a television quiz show. That was how she had met Joe Clannan, a shareholder in the production company that made the show. He was a property millionaire, and, when he had proposed, she had accepted for Sam’s sake.

Joe wanted a young sexy trophy wife, and he made her change her name. To him, ‘Angela’ was dull and provincial, but ‘Angel’ was the sexy, young ‘bit’ that he wanted.

He took her to every film premiere, every fashionable restaurant opening, and she was always dressed to the nines and dripping with jewels. The idea was to show the world that coarse, vulgar Joe Clannan had a wife that other men envied him for.

She did what pleased him because she was grateful that Sam now had a comfortable life with her, cared for by two nurses. Often he didn’t know who she was, but he seemed happy, and that was all she asked.

She became a minor celebrity, famous for being famous, appearing on reality TV, fluttering her eyelashes, giggling and doing all she could to make Joe proud.