She’d meant it as a compliment, but her words danced both ways, hot and cold, kind and cruel,

‘Life’s what you make it,

She could feel Margaret’s gaze haunting her. The blunt edge of her jealousy.

Niente/Nothing

A little over a month before, they’d driven up to Orvieto, a city built on a huge rock overlooking the Paglia Valley. They’d sat on the bonnet of the jeep and drunk red wine out of their canteens as bombers roared overhead towards Mount Cetona, the boundary of Tuscany. They’d stumbled into the cathedral, into the San Brizio chapel, where Luca

Had grounded them and introduced them to a way of life they would aspire to and return to.

Darnley said that Sigmund Freud had visited in 1899 and had somehow forgotten Signorelli’s name. This he’d called the mechanism of repression and it became fundamental in Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams.

‘Luce intellettual, piena d’amore.’ What’s that mean, sir? Light of the mind, full of love.

They shared the same simplicity of décor, a luxurious ease of taste and style, frescoes on the ceilings, but only curved lines and clusters of leaves, blue and white, or white and pink, washed out by age or a skilful brush.