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somewhere in the hills. How’s that for a plan?’ Skin from the coffee clung to his moustache. Portia had never felt so ashamed of him. How Hillary could suffer such a thing on top of her had always been something of a puzzle. Now that she knew there was such a man as Ned in the world, it took on the qualities of an eternal cosmic mystery.
    ‘Sounds good to me,’ said Gordon. ‘Sound good to you, Porsh?’
    ‘Completely.’
    Portia stopped herself from shrugging moodily. She didn’t mind behaving like a spoiled adolescent in front of her parents, but in front of Gordon she preferred to look more sophisticated. What she really wanted to say was, ‘So we’re going to arrive at Lucca in time to find all the shops and cafés shut, are we? And as usual we’re going to have to wander around a completely empty and deserted town for five hours until everyone else has woken from their siestas. That’s a great plan, Pete.’
    Instead she contented herself with remarking, ‘Arnolfini was from Lucca.’
    ‘How’s that?’ said Gordon.
    'There’s a painting by van Eyck,’ said Portia, ‘called
The Arnolfini Marriage.
Arnolfini, the man in the painting, was from Lucca. He was a merchant.’
    ‘Yeah? How d’you know something like that?’
    ‘I don’t know, I must have read it somewhere.’
    ‘I never studied art history.’
    Portia realised that saying ‘Neither did I, you don’t have to “study” something to know about it,’ would sound arrogant, so once again, she curbed her tongue. Really, she was becoming insufferably intolerant these days. And she liked Gordon. She liked his quiet acceptance of the terrible things that had happened to him. He seemed to like her too and it is very easy, she thought, to like someone who likes you. That wasn’t vanity, that was practical common sense.
    ‘Aha, methinks I hear the musical rattle of a Fiat,’ said Pete, head cocked in the direction of the driveway, ‘bearing, perchance, dispatches from England.’
    Portia jumped up. She forgave herself her moodiness.
    As a junkie needs a fix, so had she been needing a letter. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘I need to practise my Italian on him.’
    Hillary called after her. ‘Porsh, you know your results won’t be coming through for at least another week! Besides, Mrs Worrell said she would telephone us here if anything arrived that looked like it might be from the examination board…’
    But Portia was already out of the house and stepping into the harsh whiteness of day. Never mind exam results. Never mind anything. A letter from Ned, let there be a letter from Ned.
    ‘Buongiorno, Signor Postino!’
    ‘Buongiorno, ragazza mia.'
    ‘Come va, questo giorno?’
    ‘Bene, grazie, bene. Ј lei?’
    ‘Anche molto bene, mule grazie.
Um …
una lettra per mi?’
    ‘Momento, momentino, Signorina. Eccola! Ma solamente una carta. Mi dispiace, cara mia.’
    A postcard, only a postcard. She fought back her disappointment and took it with trembling hands. He was sailing, she told herself. A letter would be difficult. Besides, looking at the postcard with a growing sense of delight, she saw that he had covered it in the tiniest script he could manage and even put the address of the villa in bright red ink so that it stood out against the minuscule blue handwriting which wormed around almost every square millimetre of the card. He had even managed to weave narrow threads of words between the lines of the address, she saw. It was better than a letter. To see how much care he had taken. A thousand times better. She was so full of delight and love that she almost broke into sobs.
    ‘Ciao, bella!’
    ‘Ciao, Signor Postino!’
    She turned the card over and looked at the photograph on the front, shielding her eyes from the reflective dazzle. A small fishing port glittered in a softer sunlight than the one that glared down on her now. ‘The Harbour, Tobermorey’ the caption read in old-fashioned yellow cursive letters. The photograph