I rang again just as the door opened.

“Nervous?”

“Deaf?”

“If you want to fast, you just have to say so. No point in beating about the bush.”

I didn’t want to fast. From inside the apartment came a nice smell of freshly cooked food. I raised my hands to my chest, palms turned outwards as a sign of surrender, and squeezed past her to get inside.

“Did I tell you you could come in?”

“I bought you a book.”

She looked at my empty hands, and I took the bookshop bag from the pocket of my winter jacket. Then she closed the door.

“What is it?”

“Constantin Cavafy. A Greek poet. Listen to this. It’s called ‘Ithaca’.”

I opened the white book, sat down on the sofa, and read: Hope that the way is long,

That the summer mornings are many,

When you enter at last, with such joy,

Ports you are seeing for the first time:

May you stop at Phoenician markets

And purchase fine goods,

Mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

And sensual perfumes of every kind,

As many sensual perfumes as you can,

And may you visit many Egyptian cities

To learn and learn from their scholars

Always keep Ithaca in your mind

To arrive there is your destiny.

But do not hurry the journey in any way.

Better that it should last for years…

Margherita took the book out of my hands. Keeping the place with her finger, she looked at the cover – there was no illustration on it, just a poem – passed her finger over the smooth white paper, and read the back page. Then she turned back to the poem I’d been reading and I saw she was moving her lips, silently.

When she’d finished, she looked at me and gave me a quick kiss.

“OK. You can stay and eat. Wash your hands, put a CD on and lay the table. In that order.”