He had accomplished this, but at the price of forgetting totally about other matters, such as making an appearance at the Ministry and possibly seeing his friend Gilberto. He had even forgotten to eat. There were times when he remembered his period in the clinic almost with nostalgia. Everything had been so simple then. No one expected you to be competent or to take any initiatives. On the contrary, such behaviour was frowned upon. The staff told you what to do and when to do it, and you obeyed them. There was no need to plan or act. In retrospect, it had all been very relaxing.

He finished the rather dry roll, washing it down with the rest of the beer. To be honest, he realised, the visit to the consultant had been just a pretext. His real reason for going had simply been to go, to escape the encircling walls of Lucca. This massive brick barrier had once seemed reassuring, but after one month bedridden and another confined to the apartment in Via del Fosso, it had become as spiritually suffocating as it literally became in high summer, shutting out every open perspective and refreshing breeze. No doubt that was why he had arrived in Rome hours before his appointment, killing the time by sitting around in cafes and gazing mindlessly at everyone who came and went, like a tourist. And afterwards, instead of taking the first train north, he wasted further hours at a cinema in a seat so close to the screen that the movie was an incomprehensible blur. Now, though, he was on his way home, this brief spell of parole at an end. It could be prolonged slightly by deliberately missing the connection at Florence, so that by the time he arrived back at the apartment, Gemma would with any luck be asleep.

But there was still tomorrow, and the day after, and all the days after that. Once upon a time he could have turned to his work for distraction, but it seemed doubtful, feeling the way he did, that he would even be able to hold down the sort of routine administrative job he had been allocated years before during a period when he was in disfavour, doing the rounds of provincial headquarters to check that the petty pilfering and misappropriation of funds were being kept within broadly acceptable limits.