Cautiously, so not to scare him off, she said, ‘Can you be sure that it’s gone finally?’

‘Quite sure. Since I know hardly anything about her. She was English, her name was Sapphire, and we had two weeks together. That’s all.’

But it wasn’t all, she could tell. During those weeks something had happened to him that had been like an earthquake.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked.

‘I met her in London about two-and-a-half years ago. I was visiting friends, but they suddenly had a family crisis, so I left them to it and explored London on my own. We met in the bar of my hotel. She was there to meet a friend who didn’t show up, we got talking and-that was it.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Like something from another world. So insubstantial that I was almost afraid to touch her. I knew her for two weeks, and then she vanished.’

‘Vanished? Where?’

‘I’ve no idea. I never saw her again. Perhaps she was nothing but a mad hallucination?’

Evie was astonished. Who would have thought the hardheaded Ruggiero could talk in this way? She wondered if he even realised what he’d revealed. He was looking into the distance, his eyes fixed on some inner world. She held her breath, willing him to go on.

But instead he made a sound that was part-grunt, part-nervous laugh, seeming to draw himself back from the brink.

‘Hey, what the hell?’ he said edgily. ‘These things happen. Easy come, easy go.’

‘But I don’t think it was easy,’ Evie urged. ‘I think she meant more to you than that.’

He shrugged. ‘It was a holiday romance. How much do they ever mean?’

‘Ruggiero-’

‘Do you want to come with me tomorrow or not?’

‘Yes, of course. But-’

‘Fine. Be ready to leave early in the morning.’

He bid her goodnight and hurried to his room, despising himself for making a cowardly escape, but unable to help it. Much more of that conversation and he would have gone mad.