We drank. The wine was strong, but delicious. I took two more sips. “Right,” said Aidan. “I’m Sergeant-Major Tobias, and you’re Private Hope. Here’s the drill.”

“Drill! You’re too young to have been in the war.”

“I spent the war in a boarding school, for heaven’s sake. Do you think we didn’t have drill?”

I tried to imagine what Aidan had been like as a schoolboy. I would have been a very little girl. “So while I was learning my letters and knitting socks for Our Boys in France,” I said, “you were practising to be one of Our Boys.”

“But luckily the war ended before I had to go, thank God.”

I thought of the memorial in Haverth that bore the names of sixteen young men from the parish who had given their lives in France. One of them was Mary Trease’s half-brother. When the telegram had come, the loss ceased to be personal to the Treases and became that of the whole village. Robert Trease had been killed early in the war; as more and more families were bereaved, and fiancées robbed of their marriages, all we prayed for was the end.

“Ready?” said Aidan. “I’m Signor Lingo, the proprietor of the language school. I speak English, of course, but only just.” He cleared his throat and took on his character. “So, Miss Freebody, you wish to have Italian class? I am so very honoured! But please, you tell me why you come to Castiglioncello?”

“Um… My cousin, Mr Tobias, is acting in a film being made near here. We have taken an apartment in the town, and I shall be keeping house for him. As we are to be here for some time, I wish to learn to converse with Italian people.”

“Very good,” said Aidan. He poured some more wine into his glass and held out the bottle, but I shook my head. “And, Miss Freebody,” he went on, still as Signor Lingo, “may I ask what you do when you are not learning of the Italian here with us? You have free time? You like to come out with me to swimming, perhaps?”

I was frowning at him, my glass halfway to my mouth. “What?”

“I’m trying to be authentic,” he said. He put down his wine glass and shrugged, spreading his hands. “We poor men, we see bee-oo-ti-ful lady like you and we cannot help ourselves. You come to beach with me?”

I took a sip. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Just warning you. Italians are well-known for being Casanovas, as I’m sure you know. They’ll try it on with you, Clara, every single one you meet, so I hope you’re ready.”

“Well…” I was not sure what to say. “I’ll have to be, I suppose.”

He had taken up his glass again and was looking into it, swirling the wine around moodily. “You see, what I’m really trying to say, in my clumsy way, is that I don’t think you realize how very, very attractive you are. To men, I mean.” His cheeks suddenly flushed. I was intrigued; I had never seen his composure disintegrate so suddenly.

“Obviously, David’s eye was caught by your astonishing beauty on that newsreel, and, to give him his due, he also recognized talent in you. But every man on that film set would have courted you if he could. Well, except Dennis, but that’s another story. The only reason they kept their hands off you is that David already had his hands on you.” He had recovered enough to look at me with glowing eyes. “Believe me, Clara, beauty is a gorgeous thing, but it can be a weapon, too. And in the end, when you’ve fought off God knows how many Italians, you’re going to have to use that weapon against David.”

The kitchen was silent. I sat there on the stool, and Aidan leaned against the stove. We regarded each other warily. I had begun to understand what he was saying to me but was not sure I wanted to. “You mean, I must use the fact that he finds me so attractive to…”

“To weaken him,” supplied Aidan. “And when he is weak, we will be strong.”