Emma pressed her hands against her ears, and asked herself some fundamental questions. Why am I here? Am I really making a difference? Why can’t she put some clothes on? What is that smell? Where do I want to be right now? She wanted to be in Rome, with Dexter Mayhew. In bed. ‘Shaf-tes-bury Avenue.’ ‘No, Shafts-bury. Three syllables.’ ‘Lychester Square.’ ‘Leicester Square, two syllables.’ ‘Why not Ly-chester?’ ‘No idea.’ ‘But you are meant to be my teacher, you are meant to know.’ ‘Sorry,’ Dexter shrugged. ‘Well I think it is stupid language,’ said Tove Angstrom, and punched him in the shoulder. ‘A stupid language. I couldn’t agree with you more. No need to hit me though.’ ‘I apologise,’ said Tove, kissing his shoulder, then his neck and mouth, and Dexter was once again struck by how rewarding teaching could be. They lay in a tangle of cushions on the terracotta floor of his tiny room, having given up on the single bed as inadequate for their needs. In the brochure for the Percy Shelley International School of English, the teachers’ accommodation had been described as ‘some comfortable with many mitigating features’ and this summed it up perfectly. His room in the Centro Storico was dull and institutional, but there was at least a balcony, a foot-wide sill overlooking a picturesque square that, in a very Roman way, also functioned as a car park. Each morning he was woken by the sound of office-workers breezily reversing their cars into each other. But in the middle of this humid July afternoon, the only sound came from the wheels of tourist suitcases rumbling on the cobbles below, and they lay with the windows wide open, kissing lazily, her hair clinging to his face, thick and dark and smelling of some Danish shampoo: artificial pine and cigarette smoke. She reached across his chest for the packet on the floor, lit two cigarettes and passed him one, and he shuffled up onto the pillows, letting the cigarette dangle from his lip like Belmondo or someone in a Fellini film. He had never seen a Belmondo or Fellini film, but was familiar with the postcards: stylish, black and white.