I have been forgetting to mention, because they are like the doors in my mind, themselves opening and closing and staying half-open, half-closed, the hidden doors and grates and the anonymous metal gates of the city. Down so many quiet streets, we peeked through so many little doorways at so many hands at work. Behind smudged glass fronts or curving wooden doors propped open, behind steel curtains pulled up halfway, they formed, shaped, ground, built. There was a chair in the making, a lampshade, a chair again, maybe a car, and, once, loaves of bread: one baker sat for a smoke outside while another stood in a fine cloud of flour.

At dusk one day, Olive took me by the hand. “Come-come,” he said, and we ran across the tram lines on via Trastevere. Via della Luce seemed the narrowest and crookedest of narrow, crooked streets – I know now it wasn’t, but at the time the light was fading fast and I had no idea but for the hand in a hand. I navigated blue-grey pumps across cobblestones higgledy piggledy till we saw the pool of light by the Innocenti biscuit shop. There were fruit pies in the window, a pile of palmiers, a handwritten sign on orange card that read Tramezzinni su ordinazione; then, further in, the biscuits heaped high – trays upon silver trays of chocolate-dipped, almond-dotted, sugar-sprinkled, cherry-centred.

It smelt of sweetness and butter.

The biscuit lady wrapped a slice of chocolate-chip cake in a sheet of kitchen paper and sent us off with a smile and a paper sack of biscotti.