“I’ll let you know as soon as your items go to auction,” Nigel said. “And when we know more about the paintings, you can decide if you want to keep them or send them to auction as well.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very kind.”

“Only doing my job, as my father used to say.” He smiled. “So you’ll go back to work now, but I’m sure the grieving process will take you a while. It always does.”

I felt tears stinging at my eyes. “I didn’t think I’d grieve at all,” I said. “My father was not an easy man. He was critical and he never encouraged closeness. But now I really miss him, and I wish I’d taken the trouble to get to know him better.” I weighed whether to show him the letter and tell him my plans. “Actually, I’ve just found out that he was in Italy during the war,” I said. “I always knew he’d survived a plane crash, but I didn’t know where. I thought I’d go over and see the site for myself—see if the villagers remember anything about him.”

“Oh, good idea, now you have a little disposable income,” he said. “Whereabouts in Italy?”

“Tuscany,” I said. “The village was called San Salvatore. I’m not exactly sure where it is.”

He frowned. “San Salvatore? No, that’s not familiar. I’ve done the principal tourist sites: Siena, Cortona, Florence, of course. Do you know the area?”

“I’ve never been abroad before apart from a two-day trip to Paris with the school once,” I confessed.

He beamed then, making him look quite attractive. “You’ll love it. And the food!”

“The food is good?”

“The food is incredible. All those rich, herby sauces for the pasta. You’ll put on weight, I guarantee, although that wouldn’t worry you, I’m sure. You are so slender.”

“Slender” wasn’t really the word—“skinny” was more like it. I had lost weight in the past months. “I look forward to it, then,” I said. “My mother was a terrific cook, but since then I don’t think I’ve really enjoyed my food.

“And the local wines,” he said. “I wish I had some holiday coming. I’d pop over and join you.”

“I expect I’m only going to be a few days,” I said hesitantly because he was coming across as too eager again.

“Take your time. Enjoy it,” he said.

I had spent the last few weeks in London taking a crash course in Italian. Of course I wasn’t fluent yet, but I felt confident that I could get by. I had a small Italian dictionary and phrase book in my purse, just in case, and my father’s little box. I had carried that with me everywhere as a kind of talisman.

It was only as I sat jolting and unable to sleep on the night train travelling across France and then through the Alps that doubts started to creep in again. What was I doing? What did I really hope to achieve? The woman to whom my father had written had no longer been at her last known address. That meant she had moved away, or had died. If there had been a child and that child had been hidden away where nobody else could find him, then he too would be long dead. Even if by some miracle I located Sofia, I would only be reawakening a long-ago grief, maybe causing trouble for her if she had a husband or family. The problem was that I had to know. I was naturally curious on my own behalf, but more than that, I felt this was something I had to do for my father. I would be filling in the blank pieces of his life-puzzle. Maybe I would answer the questions of why a brilliant young painter suddenly stopped painting and why for the rest of his life he was a hollow, remote, and depressed man.

By the time the train approached Florence, I had adopted a more positive outlook. I was on a quest. Whatever happened I felt that I was doing the right thing. I had no idea how to find the village of San Salvatore. I had looked for it on a map and couldn’t locate it. It was possible it didn’t still exist, of course. Places had been bombed into oblivion during the war, I knew that. But I wasn’t going to give up. Before I started on the next stage of my journey, I found a bank and changed some pounds into lira. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, and I wondered how I would keep track of all those thousands. Then I treated myself to a cappuccino and a sinful pastry made with honey and almonds at a pavement café before going back into the station to find out how to undertake the next stage of my journey.

Even the man in the travel agency at the station had to look up the village on a map. “San Salvatore,” he said. “The name is familiar, but . . .” Then he put his finger on it. “Ah, that’s why I couldn’t find it. I was looking down in the Chianti region, but it’s actually in the northern part of Tuscany. In the hills above Lucca. See.” I peered over his shoulder and nodded. A tiny dot amid lots of green.

“And how do I get there? I suppose there is no train?”

“There is a train for the first part of your journey,” he said. He studied the map again. “You would need to take a train to Lucca,” he said, “then change to the branch line that would take you up the Serchio Valley to a town called Ponte a Moriano. But after that, perhaps a local bus into the hills, to a village called Orzala?” He broke off and gave a very Italian sort of shrug. Then he added, “It might be simpler to rent a car.”

I didn’t want to admit that I still didn’t have a driver’s licence. “I don’t think I’d feel comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road,” I said, “or on mountain roads.” I thanked him, went to buy my ticket, and found my way to the right platform. We left the city behind and passed through a mixture of small towns, industrial sprawl, and arable land before arriving at the old city of Lucca. Here I disembarked and had to find out which train would take me to Ponte a Moriano. Having been told which train I needed, I had to wait an hour on a hot platform. I went outside the station to look around, but all I could see were lawns leading to an impressive city wall, nothing of the city itself except for a tantalising glimpse of towers and red roofs beyond that wall. I was tempted to explore, but it was a long walk and I didn’t want to carry around my suitcase on such a warm day.