‘But it’s not the gift you really want, is it?’ he said softly. ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’

She seemed to give herself a little shake.

‘That’s all in the past, caro Toni. I don’t dwell on it.’

He knew she didn’t speak the truth. The secret that had lain between them for the thirty years of their marriage was as potent now as always. But, as always, she would not hurt him by saying that her happiness was incomplete. And, as always, he pretended to believe her.

Two men appeared in the doorway that led from the house to the terrace, and stopped at the sight of the couple holding each other tenderly.

Luke, the more heavily built of the two, grinned at the sight.

‘There’s no time for that, you two,’ he said fondly. ‘You have guests arriving in a minute.’

‘Send them away,’ Toni said, his eyes on his wife.

Primo, tall, with brilliant eyes and a laid-back air that proclaimed his Neapolitan ancestry, shook his head in mock despair.

‘Incorrigible,’ he told his brother. ‘Maybe we should leave them alone and take everyone off to a nightclub.’

‘You already spend too much time in nightclubs, my son,’ Hope said, coming over to kiss Primo’s cheek.

‘A man needs a little innocent fun,’ he said, giving her a beguiling smile.

‘Hm!’ She stood back and surveyed him tenderly. ‘My opinion of your “innocence” is best not expressed at this moment.’

‘No need,’ he said wickedly. ‘Not when you’ve expressed it so often before. I’m a lost case. Give up on me.’

‘I never give up on any of my sons,’ she said, adding softly, ‘None of them.’

In the brief silence that followed Primo and Luke exchanged glances, each understanding the hidden meaning of those words.

‘One day, Mamma,’ Primo said gently.

‘Yes, one day. One day he will be here. I know it in my heart, although I cannot tell how or when it will happen. But I will not die until he has come to me. Of that I am certain.’