‘It isn’t too late?’ Netta asked at once.

‘No, I hadn’t gone to bed.’

‘Every night you stay up late, working too hard. So I brought you some shopping because I know you don’t have time to do your own.’

This was a fiction that they had shared for years. Minnie had an expensive law practice on the Via Veneto, and a secretary who could have done her shopping. But the habit of relying on Netta had started years ago, when she had been eighteen, the bride of Gianni Pepino, and this warm, laughing woman had embraced her.

It had been that way through the years when Minnie studied law, and had continued as her practice built up to its present success. Gianni had been dead for four years now, but Minnie had neither moved to a more luxurious home, nor weakened her links to Netta, whom she loved as a mother.

‘Proscuitto, Parmesan, pasta-your favourite kind,’ Netta intoned, dumping bags on the table. ‘You check.’

‘No need, you always get it right,’ Minnie said with a smile. ‘Sit down and have a drink. Coffee? Whisky?’

‘Whisky,’ Netta said with a chuckle, heaving her huge person into a chair.

‘I’ll have some tea.’

‘You’re still English,’ Netta said. ‘Fourteen years you live in Italy and you still drink English tea.’

Minnie began putting the shopping away, pausing as she came to a small bunch of flowers.

‘I thought you’d like them,’ Netta said, elaborately casual.

‘I love them,’ Minnie said, dropping a kiss on her cheek. ‘Let’s put them with Gianni.’

Filling a small vase with water, she added the flowers and set it beside a photograph of Gianni that stood on a shelf. It had been taken a week before his death and showed a young man with a wide, humorous mouth and brilliant eyes that seemed to have a gleam deep in their depths. His naturally curly hair was too long, falling over his forehead and down his neck, and increasing the charm that glowed from the picture.