She lived a little way from town – ten minutes on the bus, a forty-minute walk. She did not count herself so poor or so energetic that she need queue at market stalls and then transport her purchases by bag and bus. Within a hundred metres of her home there was a delicatessen with a fresh-products counter and an unhurried clientele, and this she used. Of course there were those times when she preferred to shop in city streets for clothes or shoes or presents for her nieces. Once in a while, after work, she set off down the mall towards the boutiques and the studios, determined to spend money on herself. On the evening that Signor Busi first met Victor and then ventured to hold Anna by the wrist, she had felt so glad to be herself, so glad to be admired and flirted with (if only by a creaky clothes horse from Milan) that she went looking for a treat in town. She’d seen a brooch that she wanted, handmade, a galaxy of silver stars, a single moon of pearl. She’d need a darker jacket, too, to suit the brooch.
