For a long time she looked at him without saying anything, then she lowered her head and walked away from him, heading for home.

He caught up with her. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What’s what supposed to mean?’

‘That look.’

She stopped again and gazed up at him. ‘Sometimes I wonder where the man I married went.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that when I married you, Guido, you believed in all those things that you make fun of now.’ Before he could ask her what they were, she answered him, ‘Things like justice and what’s right, and how to decide to do what’s right.’

‘I still believe in those things,’ he insisted.

‘You believe in the law now, Guido,’ she said, but gently, as though she were speaking to a child.

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ he said, raising his voice, deaf and blind to the people who hurried past them in increasing numbers, now that it was closer to the time when the first stalls would open. ‘You make what I do sound stupid or dirty. I’m a policeman, for God’s sake. What do you want me to do except obey the law? And enforce it?’ He felt his entire body blaze with hot rage as he saw, or thought he saw, how she had for years belittled and dismissed what he did.

‘Then why did you lie to Ruberti?’ she asked.

His rage fled. ‘I didn’t lie.’

‘You told him there was some confusion, that he didn’t understand what I meant. But he knows, and you do, and I do, and so did that other policeman, exactly what I meant and what I did.’ When he said nothing she moved closer to him. ‘I broke the law, Guido. I broke their window and I’d do it again. And I’ll go on breaking their windows until your law, this precious law you’re so proud of, until your law does something – either to me or to them. Because I won’t let them go on doing what they’re doing.’

His hands shot out before he could stop himself and grabbed her by the elbows. But he didn’t pull her to him. Instead, he stepped towards her, then wrapped his arms round her back, one hand pressing her face into the angle of his neck. He kissed the top of her head and sank his face into her hair. Suddenly he pulled himself back, hand clasped to his mouth.