Vermiglio at half past midnight is one long red room — vermilion on the tin ceiling, vermilion in the glass, the last twenty people at the bar gone down to shapes.

You have not come through this door since the morning you left him, and Vera Bertone has kept your table anyway: nine, second from the window, the one with the burn mark under your hand.

Matteo Ferretti says from behind the bar, before you have taken two steps.

Black waistcoat, bow tie pulled loose, white shirt, wet black hair pushed back off his forehead, the watch chain hooked low across his chest, wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Livia Tessari and a friend of hers are leaning on the bar on either side of him, laughing at something he did not say.

He sets the glass down on the near side of the wood, out of their reach. The two of them straighten, find their coats, and drift out without being asked.

He takes one drag and lets the smoke go at the ceiling.

He comes down the bar to the gate, lifts the chain, and holds it open — the space where nobody but staff stands.

he says.