The noisy weeping was over. The ladders were carried discreetly to the side and the mourners started to shuffle away.

They came towards Immacolata.

She wondered whether Maria Rossetti would hug her, kiss her, cling to her. She wondered, also, whether Luigi Rossetti would shake her hand, composed, or whether his head would sink on to her shoulder and wet it with his tears. She hardly knew them, had never been to their home – it would have been impossible for her to reciprocate Marianna’s hospitality, for her friend to come to the Borelli clan’s apartment – but she had assumed that a daughter would have told her mother of a friend. She thought she would be thanked for the respect she had shown their daughter.

Lopsided, balanced on one shoe, she waited for the little group to reach her.

Peculiar. They seemed not to have seen her.

Maria and Luigi Rossetti were nearing her – perhaps a few of their brothers, sisters, cousins with them – but none in the group smiled in the wan way of the grieving. She might as well not have been there. They came on. She did not know what to do with the flowers and they were in her hand, which hung against her hip, and her hat had slipped to the side as she had hurried through the cemetery – the veil no longer covered her left eye.

She had met – engineered occasions – Maria and Luigi Rossetti at the college where she and Marianna had studied. It would be hard for her to step aside without standing on a grave, and, if she wobbled – as she might without a shoe – she would knock over two or three vases holding artificial blooms… It was not as if they hadn’t seen her. The parents’ eyes were now wide open, assimilating who was astride their path.

Immacolata knew that she was seen and recognised and the greeting came first from Luigi.