‘After what they saw in the street?’

‘I’ll tell them you’re a lousy kisser-don’t throw that!’

He ducked as a book came flying past his head and struck the wall with a loud crack.

‘Out,’ she told him.

‘Shouldn’t we fix our next date? They’ll expect it-’

‘Out!’

He got as far as the door before saying, ‘Are you spending the night here?’

‘No, I’m going back to my apartment.’

‘Then shouldn’t we be leaving together?’

Helen breathed hard. ‘Signor Martelli, if you’d been listening to a word I said, you’d know that I would prefer not to share the same planet with you, never mind the same cab.’

‘I know,’ he said gravely. ‘I’m not keen on you either, but we have to make these sacrifices.’

‘Who’ll know if we leave together or not?’

‘Anyone who’s standing at their window.’

The appalling truth of this hit her like a sledge-hammer. ‘Which means the whole street,’ she groaned. ‘I’ll call us a cab.’

When she’d finished making the call he was holding up her coat, and Helen put her arms in the sleeves, accepting the inevitable. They had to leave together, or there would be talk, and there’d already been too much of that.

Luckily the cab appeared quickly and they both behaved with perfect propriety. Lorenzo gave her his arm down the steps of the building, which were slippery from frost. She allowed him to show her to the vehicle and open the door for her. She never looked up but she was burningly conscious of many pairs of eyes watching from above.

As the car’s tail lights disappeared around the corner Mamma Angolini dropped the curtain of her bedroom window, and heaved a sentimental sigh. ‘Did you see the way he handed her in?’

Poppa, standing beside her, frowned, ‘But what were those noises earlier?’