In the brief silence she could sense him looking around, and strove not to smile.

‘Why-did she tell you that?’ he asked, almost nervously.

She assumed a wicked, breathy innocence. ‘You mean, it’s not true? Your eyes are really deep red?’

‘Only when I’ve had too much to drink.’

She laughed so much that Wicksy, dozing at her feet, pushed his snout against her, asking if all was well.

Something other than laughter was happening that evening. It was in the air between them. Another woman might have read it in his eyes. Celia sensed it with the whole of her being.

The talk drifted back to his family.

‘My mother’s English, but you’d never know it. At heart Signora Rinucci is a real Italian mamma, determined to marry all her sons off.’

‘Six sons? That’s quite an undertaking. How’s she doing?’

‘Four married, two left, But my brother Ruggiero has just got engaged. He’ll marry Polly fairly soon, and then Mamma will turn her firepower on me.’

So now he’d contrived to let her know that he wasn’t married, she thought, appreciating his tactics.

‘Don’t your parents do the same with you?’ he asked casually.

‘It’s the one thing they’ve never given me advice about,’ she said. ‘Except when Dad’s been at work in the kitchen Mum will say, “Never marry a man who cooks squid.” And she’s right.’

After a brief silence he said, ‘We have squid in the Bay of Naples. Best in the world, so the fishermen say.’

‘But you don’t cook it, do you?’

‘No, I don’t cook it,’ he assured her.

And then a strange silence fell, slightly touched by embarrassment, as though they’d both strayed closer to danger than they’d meant.

Celia found that she couldn’t be the one to break the silence, because she was so conscious of what had caused it, but his manner of breaking it brought no comfort. He offered her coffee and another glass of wine, his manner polite and impeccable. Earlier he’d been warm and pleasant. Suddenly only courtesy was left, and it had a hollow feel.