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Xan had almost put his encounter with the extraordinarily self-possessed young woman by the Giudecca Canal out of his mind. Almost. But then he saw her again.

He was sitting over a coffee under the arches at Florian’s, reading a month-old English newspaper without a great degree of concentration, when he glanced up – he couldn’t have said why – to see her crossing the square, scattering the pigeons, which whirled up in an indignant flock against the blue sky and the cupolas of St Mark’s. This time she wasn’t alone; she had a ragged Venetian urchin with her, carrying her easel while she carried a stool. The odd pair appeared to be conversing with a fair degree of animation, as if they were the best of friends.

He didn’t follow her, but… he didn’t not follow her. When he’d finished his drink and paid for it, he headed off slowly in the same direction. Call him curious – nothing more. He would not, he told himself, have pursued her across half the city, certainly not into a maze of dark alleyways where his intentions might be misinterpreted, but she stayed in the open on the Riva degli Schiavoni, and therefore so did he. He was free to promenade where he pleased, as was anyone. Like Venice itself, he was scarcely upon solid ground here in his self-justification, he was aware, but nonetheless he pressed on, and saw with an odd little thrill of pleasure that she had stopped ahead of him.

It was a broad walkway here, wide enough to accommodate a number of pedestrians with ease, and so she had little trouble setting herself up with a view of San Giorgio Maggiore. He knew the main landmarks now. How did one choose what to paint, he wondered, in a city where so much was beautiful? Where even the decay – if one didn’t have to live in it and suffer its inconveniences and dangers – was picturesque?

The attendant urchin, who was not in himself particularly lovely to behold, was still helping her erect her easel and position her stool when Xan reached her. As he approached, the child shot him a sharp, feral glance and said something to the lady that Mr Challender did not understand, in its precise meaning, and yet did, in its tone and general import. She laughed, replying in the same slurring dialect, and the brat grinned hideously at whatever she had said. As he doffed his hat to her, and stood with it in his hand, feeling foolish, Xan was aware that once again he was blushing. He was the only person in Venice who did, apparently.

‘Are you following me, sir?’ she asked baldly, turning towards him, hands placed challengingly on hips. The sir was not a mark of respect, but rather the opposite. There were any number of people passing by, of all ranks and nationalities, but nobody seemed to pay them the least heed. Perhaps such confrontations, and worse ones, were quite usual here.

‘No… Yes. I suppose I am. I’m sorry. I saw you crossing St Mark’s, I was sitting at Florian’s…’

‘Of course you were.’

‘And I remembered our conversation… I was curious about you, after the few words we exchanged when we met.’ He could not flatter himself that this curiosity was in any sense mutual.

She said composedly, ‘You do realise, I hope, that this city has more than its share of ladies whose company can be enjoyed for a handsome fee, and yet I am not one of them? If you think because of my lack of chaperon that I must be such a person, that says more about you than me, you should be aware.’

He supposed he deserved that. His cheeks must be flaming; they felt as though they were. ‘I know. I have seen Venetian courtesans, one can hardly avoid it, and they are terrifying in quite a different way. Nor have I any desire to force myself on your attention.’

‘And yet…’ She made a very Italian gesture that encompassed him, their situation, and perhaps the world in general. Men, certainly.

He could hardly be more firmly in the wrong. ‘You have not the least obligation to speak to me; I can make no such outrageous claim. I find myself curious about you, but… that’s my affair, not yours.’

‘True.’ She was holding up her hand now to shield her eyes from the strong sunlight, and so he could not see her face as clearly as he might have wished. There were gulls crying above them, the slap of water against the piles that supported the shore, snatches of song from the gondoliers, and a babble of voices conversing in a dozen languages, but he had no attention to spare for any of it.

Xan hurried to explain himself, supposing such a thing was even possible. ‘I enjoy solitude, I suppose, and you appear to be the same. Yes, I know I am intruding on it just now and making a liar of myself; no need to tell me so. It’s just… You’re English, or so I think, and yet you seem entirely at home here. And I in contrast am all but overwhelmed by the place, and not just because I don’t speak more than a word or two of Italian. I feel as though there’s a trick to it, being at ease here, though I know that can’t be true. It’s as if I’ve stumbled unawares into the middle of a play, for which everyone else knows the lines, but I do not. It makes me question the nature of reality. As though either it’s real, all this’ – he waved a large English hand at it – ‘or I am, but we can’t both be. Does that make any sense at all?’ He seriously doubted it did. He didn’t know where the extraordinary sentiments he had just given voice to had come from. But he knew the deep truth of them as he spoke, and after, as they seemed to echo in his ears.

The urchin snorted derisively, whether at his words, imagining that he comprehended any part of them, or at the fact that he was still here, bothering the lady, but she said musingly, ‘I think it does, oddly enough. You do understand that most English people deal with this unsettling sensation of strangeness in one’s own skin when travelling by assuming that everywhere else in the world is indeed a sort of backdrop to a play, put on for their amusement or their profit? The people inhabiting these places aren’t real, they can’t be, neither their lives and concerns nor their emotions and wishes; only the English people are. If they do not understand you when you speak, you can merely raise your voice and shout. And yet also the French – many of them – appear to suffer under a similar delusion of specialness; Bonaparte certainly did. And the Venetians did once too, in their own ruthless fashion. A useful fancy, if one is a tourist, and a necessary one, I suppose, if one intends to invade half the world and impose one’s will on it in blood and terror.’

‘I don’t think that,’ he said quickly. ‘I don’t assume any such outrageous and unjustifiable thing. I know that I must always be the interloper here, and in most places when I am away from home. I didn’t arrive straight from Dover, either; if I had, the shock would have been too great and I daresay I’d be raving by now. But nowhere else I have been on my travels has made me feel like this.’

She was smiling indulgently now, and her small, watchful protector seemed to have stood down a fraction as a result. ‘Have you been to Rome yet? I would have thought Rome might have a similar confusing and overwhelming effect. It did make a great impression on me, I confess.’

Of course she was more widely travelled than he, despite her youth; maybe that explained her assurance. He shook his head. ‘No, not yet. I crossed the Alps and came down the Po Valley straight to here. Milan and all those other places, they’re not like this. They’re not so different from France, from Paris, at any rate, which itself is not so different from London. Not enough to affect one’s equilibrium as this place does.’

‘Perhaps it’s all the water,’ she offered gravely. Probably she was mocking him, and probably he had earned it.

He shrugged, in what he knew was an awkward manner, nothing like her fluid, natural fashion of moving. ‘I think it might be the light, which I imagine has a great deal to do with the water. But I can’t claim any special knowledge. You’re an artist, ma’am; does it strike you so?’

She hesitated a fraction and then said, ‘If a place one visits is at peace, or more or less so, as here – it’s a city under Austrian occupation again now, of course, but casual visitors need notice little sign of that – and yet one feels a deep-set unease, perhaps the discomfort is something one has brought in one’s trunk, as it were, rather than found here waiting. Don’t you think? It’s been my observation that many of the foreign travellers here in particular seem to be running from something or someone. You mentioned Lord Byron the other day – he is in some sense a fugitive, isn’t he? My sisters write that he has made London too hot to hold him. And I understand, though I do not move in such circles myself, that when he enters a salon in Venice, all the English ladies instantly get up and leave it, lest they should be tainted by his mere presence. Not the gentlemen, of course, but that’s quite a different topic.’

Xan replied rather stiffly, ‘I assure you, madam, I have left no such scandal behind me. But… I admit you are in some sense correct, in that I know I have brought my own trouble along with me, and here at what feels like the edge of Europe it has perhaps caught up with me at last, run as far and as fast as I might. My wife died last year…’

‘I’m sorry,’ she replied swiftly, with what looked like genuine sympathy. ‘I did not mean to pry, or rouse such painful memories.’

‘You were not to know; I raised the topic, not you. And I think the memories are already thoroughly roused without any blame to you. But you are in some sort of mourning too, are you not, ma’am?’

‘Yes,’ she said with an odd sort of reluctance. ‘My husband also died a while ago.’ And then, as if she wished to turn the conversation to matters less painful to them both, ‘I’m half-Italian; my mother was born in Piacenza, a small and lovely city you must have passed through on your way here. I grew up in London, and because of the war and financial constraints we were only able to travel abroad once Bonaparte had fallen. But I spoke Italian already, my mama made sure of that, and I have striven to improve my skills since I’ve been here, which may account for the ease you speak of, and to pick up some Venetian besides, which is very different. And yet I understand what you mean about this place affecting one. It’s not like anywhere else, even Rome; it can overset one with its shameless and almost unreal beauty. This can hardly be an original or a profound observation; I’m not claiming it as such.’

Xan became rather belatedly aware that he had surely delighted this stranger enough, and taken up far too much of her morning. He didn’t want to leave her, but he should. ‘I have enjoyed speaking to you, ma’am,’ he said frankly, ‘but I know that you have come here to paint and I am wasting your precious time. Forgive me; I will leave you.’

‘Ala fine,’ commented the urchin flatly, with a roll of his louche dark eyes. The youth’s continuing presence he had till now forgotten, but here he still was, scratching his belly with casual insolence as he spoke. Once more Xan did not understand his words, and yet could not fail to feel himself judged. It seemed he was the only person here at a linguistic disadvantage.

The widowed artist grinned, and did not reprove the boy for rudeness. ‘Good morning, sir,’ she said. ‘No doubt we shall bump into each other again before you leave; this is a great place for that, I have observed. If you should wish to avoid a person you will find that you may scarcely do so. But if we do not meet again, I trust the city may resolve itself into something more solid under your feet, now that you have realised the personal nature of your dilemma. I am sorry for your loss, and hope your distress may be eased by time and distance and new sights, if nothing else.’