‘Of course not!’ her husband snapped, his fit of nervous hesitancy quite dispelled. ‘I was simply…’

He broke off.

‘Ricco was just telling me about that terrible business of the climber they found dead in that cave near Cortina. I didn’t know you two were personally concerned. I’m so sorry.’

Raffaela Zuccotti gave her a look which was clearly intended to convey that if she, Claudia, thought for a moment that she, Raffaela, was going to fall for such a transparently flimsy excuse as that, then she had another think coming. She turned to her husband and very forcefully said nothing.

‘I thought it was someone Claudia might have known,’ Riccardo said feebly.

‘A dead climber?’ his wife queried acidly.

‘No one knows who he was. He was found by some Austrian climbers. Well, they were cavers, actually.’

Thirty years of teaching at a liceo classico had left Raffaela well prepared for such badinage as this.

‘Whether their explorations concerned peaks or grottoes,’ she said with a pointed glance at Claudia’s ample figure, ‘I fail to see why any of this is of such personal concern to either of you.’

Claudia laughed effortlessly.

‘For God’s sake, Raffaela! The whole thing was just a misunderstanding. Ricco mentioned the news item, and I thought for some reason that he knew the poor man. I was just being sympathetic, that’s all.’

Abandoning them abruptly, she returned to the living room, where Danilo was sitting at the coffee table idly shuffling the pack of cards. Claudia subsided on to the sofa beside him and started an intense monologue about the celebrity scandal of the moment. It was conducted in an almost inaudible undertone, and she paid not the slightest attention to the Zuccotti couple when they emerged from the kitchen.

‘Thank you so much, cara!’ cried Raffaela, taking charge of the situation as always. ‘Everything was perfect. We have so enjoyed ourselves, but we really must be going. It looks like rain, doesn’t it? Come on, Ricco.’