As soon as the buildings of Castiglioncello began to appear on the road, I stopped the motorcycle, turned off the engine and pushed it through the blackness of the early hours. It was hard work; though it wasn’t a very big machine, and I had practised pushing it, by the time I wheeled it into the courtyard I was exhausted. The ride had chilled me; the sweater Aidan had left with the motorcycle had been little protection over my thin party dress, and the headache that had plagued me all evening still gripped my skull. All I wished for was a bath and bed. But before I could enter the flat, I had to do what Aidan and I had agreed.

I opened the door of the lavatory we shared with the couple upstairs. It was inconvenient having to come down to the courtyard every time we wished to use it. But for our purposes tonight, it was a godsend. Once I was inside and had shut the door, I was in utter darkness.

The sleeves of Aidan’s sweater covered my hands. I shook them back, carefully rewound the film and removed the spool. I had practised this, too, in the dark, twenty or thirty times. Then I took an oilskin packet of the kind fishermen use to store their hooks, pushed the spool of film into one of the compartments and folded the packet. I tied it as securely as I could, climbed onto the lavatory seat, reached up and hid it in the cistern.

Then, trembling with relief, I pushed the motorcycle into the neglected shed behind the building and padlocked it shut. Then, with the key in my hand, I tiptoed up our stairs and into my bedroom. I had not the energy to heat water for a bath. I lay down fully dressed, with the smell of the smoke on Aidan’s sweater in my nostrils and the calling of early-morning seagulls in my ears, and fell into a death-like sleep.