He would visit Rome and act like a responsible landlord. What he would not do was let himself be ordered around.

He put the folder away. Suddenly his room felt too quiet, its very luxury pressing in on him like a stifling blanket. Coming to a sudden decision, he took the cash out of his wallet and put it in his pocket along with the plastic card that was the key to his room. Then he locked the wallet in the wall safe, and headed downstairs.

It was a balmy night and he was warm enough in his shirtsleeves as he walked away from the hotel and hailed a taxi to take him the length of the Via del Corso, with its late-night cafés and glittering shops. At the bottom they swung right, heading for the Garibaldi Bridge over the River Tiber.

‘Here will do,’ he called to the driver when they had crossed the river.

He knew now that he must have reached the part of Rome known as Trastevere, a name which literally meant ‘on the other side of the Tiber’. It was the oldest part of the city, and still the most colourful. The light streamed on to the streets, accompanied by song, laughter and appetising smells of cooking.

He plunged into the nearest bar and was soon enveloped in conviviality. From there he drifted to another bar, relaxed by some of the best local wine he had ever tasted. Three bars later he was beginning to think that this was the way to live.

He wandered out into the cobbled street and stood there, gazing up at the full moon. Then he studied the street, realising that he had no idea where he was.

‘Looking for something?’

Turning, he saw a young man sitting at one of the outside tables. He was little more than a boy, with a charming, mobile face and dark, vivid eyes. When he grinned his teeth flashed with almost startling brilliance.

‘Ciao!’ he said, raising his glass in tipsy fellowship.

‘Ciao!’ Luke answered, coming to sit at the table beside him. ‘I was just realising that I’m lost.’

‘New here?’

‘Just arrived today.’

‘Well, now you’re here, you should stay. Nice place. Nice people.’

Luke signalled to a waiter, who brought two fresh glasses and a full bottle, accepted Luke’s money and departed.

‘Very nice people,’ the boy repeated.

‘I probably shouldn’t have done that,’ Luke said, suddenly conscience-stricken. ‘I think you’ve already had enough.’

‘If the wine is good, there’s no such thing as enough.’ He filled both glasses. ‘Soon I shall have had too much, and it still won’t be enough.’ A thought struck him. ‘I’m a very wise man. At least, I sound like one.’

‘Well, I guess it makes a kind of sense,’ Luke agreed, tasting the wine and finding it good. ‘I’m Luke, by the way.’

The young man frowned. ‘Luke? Lucio?’

‘Sure, Lucio if you want.’

‘I’m Charlie.’

It was Luke’s turn to frown. An Italian called Charlie?

‘You mean Carlo?’ he asked at last.

‘No, Charlie. It’s short for Charlemagne.’ The boy added confidentially, ‘I don’t tell many people that, only my very best friends.’

‘Thank you,’ Luke said, accepting the honour with a grin. ‘So tell your friend why you were named after the Emperor Charlemagne.’

‘Because I’m descended from him, of course.’

‘But he lived twelve hundred years ago. How can you be sure?’

Charlie looked surprised. ‘My mother told me.’

‘And you believe everything your mother tells you?’

‘What Mamma says, you’d better believe, or you’ll be sorry.’

‘Yes, mine’s that way too,’ Luke said, grinning.

They clinked glasses, and Charlie drained his, then quickly refilled it.

‘I drink to forget,’ he announced gleefully.

‘Forget what?’

‘Something or other. Who cares? Why do you drink?’

‘I’m trying to nerve myself to confront a dragon. Otherwise she might eat me.’

‘Ah, a female dragon. They’re the worst. But you’ll slay her.’

‘I don’t think this lady is easily intimidated.’

‘You just tell her you’re not standing for any nonsense,’ Charlie advised. ‘That’s the way to deal with women.’

So now he had two pieces of advice for dealing with the situation-use his non-existent charm, or try to impose what this naïve boy fondly imagined to be ‘masculine authority’.

They passed on to the next bar, and then the next, until it began to feel like time to go home.

Suddenly they heard a shout from the next street, then the sound of a child crying and an animal squealing and suddenly a crowd of young men came stumbling out of the shadows. The one in front was carrying a puppy that was squirming to escape. With them was a boy of about twelve, who continually tried to rescue his pet, but was thwarted as the lout tossed the puppy to one of the others.

‘Bastardi!’ Charlie exclaimed violently.

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Luke said.

They moved forward together.

The sight of them made the louts pause just long enough for Charlie to seize the puppy. Two of them tried to snatch it back, but Luke occupied them long enough for Charlie to give the animal to the child, who grabbed it and vanished, leaving him free to concentrate on the fight.

Two against four might seem an unequal conquest, but Charlie was furious and Luke was powerful and they managed to stop them chasing the fleeing child until there were further sounds from the narrow alleys, shouts, sirens, and all six were surrounded and carted off to the nearest police station.

The knock on the door could only be Mamma Netta Pepino. Nobody else knocked in exactly that pattern and Minnie was smiling as she went to answer it.

‘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.

Next to him stood another picture, of a young girl. Once she had been the eighteen-year-old Minnie, her face soft, slightly unfinished, still full of hope. She hadn’t known grief and despair. That came later.

Her face was finer now, elegant, more withdrawn, but still open to humour. Her fair hair, worn long in the first picture, now just brushed her shoulders, a length chosen for efficient management.

She changed the position of the flowers twice before she was satisfied.

‘He will like that,’ Netta said. ‘Always he loves flowers. Remember how often he brought them to you? Flowers for your wedding, flowers for your birthday, your anniversary-’

‘Yes, he never forgot.’

Neither woman thought it strange to speak of him both in the present and the past, changing from sentence to sentence. It came so naturally that they barely noticed.

‘How’s Poppa?’ Minnie asked.

‘Always he complains.’

‘No change there, then.’ They laughed together.

‘And Charlie?’

Netta groaned at the mention of her younger son. ‘He’s a bad boy. He thinks he’s a big man because he stays out late and drinks too much and sees too many girls.’

‘So he’s a normal eighteen-year-old,’ Minnie said gently.

In fact she, too, had been growing a little uneasy at her young brother-in-law’s exuberant habits, but she played it down for Netta’s sake.

‘It was better when he was in love with you,’ Netta mourned.

‘Mamma, he wasn’t in love with me. He’s eighteen, I’m thirty-two. He had a boyish crush, which I defused. At least, I hope I did. Charlie’s of no interest to me.’

‘No man interests you. It’s not natural. You’re a beautiful woman.’

‘I’m a widow.’

‘For too long. Now it’s time.’

‘This is my mother-in-law talking?’ Minnie asked of nobody in particular.

‘This is a woman talking to a woman. Four years you are a widow, yet no man. Scandoloso!’

‘It’s not quite true to say there have been no men in my life,’ Minnie said cautiously. ‘And, since you live right opposite me, you know that.’

‘Sure. I see them come and I see them go. But I don’t see them stay.’

‘I don’t invite them to stay,’ Minnie said quietly.

Netta’s answer to this was to give her a crushing hug.