There is a fairground carousel in the parklands of the Villa Borghese. In the evenings, as we made our way home after a day out, we liked to stop for a ride. Sometimes it was late, the merry-go-round empty, the horses still. But the old attendant knew us. He cranked up the motor and, as the lights flickered, I lifted Sophia onto her favourite mount, a gaudy creature with a golden mane.

Standing in the stirrups, she galloped through the twilight while I sat beneath the trees, listening to the sound of the fountains. I was thinking about Rome and the way it unlocked every kind of feeling and that private notion that it belonged to us.