Nancy looked around the square from her bar table, at the serenely active locals who strolled down the streets paved with marble and she could not imagine leaving. Their clothes ranged from tailored casual shirts and chinos to flowing satin dresses which seemed more appropriate for an evening out. She admired the freshly cut stalk of chilli peppers – some red, some green – which a man with white hair was carrying to his car. Their colours bloomed in the light of the morning blue sky – the same blue which dyed the white pages of her notebook while she wrote.

She looked at the table across from her. Had she any talent with a paintbrush, she thought, she would have tried to capture the lady with the white purse. Simply yet purposefully dressed in black, her greying wavy hair was swept up in a tight bun. A jade string necklace and some fuchsia pink lipstick added a tasteful touch of colour which elsewhere, might have looked ridiculous. Her handsome large nose effortlessly kept the massive square sunshades in place over two earthy brown eyes, eyes which in that moment were fixed on a shiny green scratch card. The leafy exterior peeled away with each stroke of the coin’s edge and reminded Nancy of pencil shavings, or sawdust. The woman’s determined focus faded into a glazed disappointment when she realised the card was a loser. She reluctantly reached into the purse for her phone, only half interested in finding it as she watched the traffic, glanced at the empty dessert glass under her nose, then the bill for her sweet coffee.

It was probably about that time three years previously that the town was curved and crooked to Nancy, especially at night. Everything was strange – the language, the cobbled streets lined with buildings and treaded on by people who belonged to another time. Nowadays, the town was upright and familiar, with friendly smells of pizza and torcinelli, and swarms of Italian families who would venture out for their nightly passeggiata. The pull of home now seemed oriented there, as if she had lived there all her life.