When Margherita said she wanted to talk to me, I thought she was going to tell me she was expecting a baby.

It was late on a September afternoon. The sky had that dramatic end-of-summer light that gives a foretaste of the gloom and mystery of autumn. A good time to find out I’m going to be a father, I clearly remember thinking as we sat down on the terrace, with the low sun behind us.

“I’ve been offered a new job. A very good one. But if I accept, I have to go away for several months. Maybe a year.”

I looked at her, puzzled, like someone who either hasn’t quite heard, or hasn’t understood what he has heard. What did this offer of work have to do with the child we’d be having in a few months? I couldn’t figure it out.

She explained. A major American advertising agency – she even told me the name, but I forgot it immediately, maybe wasn’t even listening – had offered her the job of coordinating the campaign for the relaunch of an airline company. She mentioned a name, a very big name, and said it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I let the words bounce around my head. They were painful, like the dull throb of a migraine. It suddenly seemed to me as if the meaning of everything revolved around some invisible point that I couldn’t locate or define.

“When did you get this offer?”

“In July. We were in contact a few times before then, but they made the formal offer in July.”

“Before we went on holiday,” I said, as if it was important.

But maybe it really was.

Then I realized. If she was telling me now, in September, two months after receiving the offer, and God knows how long after they first made contact, that meant she had already made up her mind, maybe even said yes.