Highlights

The lift at the hotel was very small, but then it was a small hotel, family-run, in a historic building, and close to the Forum… Colin hoped these advantages were evident to Archie as he edged into the space between him and the porter and their two cases. Despite the awkward comedy of the lift, he had a sense of ritual, in being taken upstairs, with a handsome young man, to the bedroom he knew already from the website, with its view of the Forum, its cable TV, and its ‘matrimonial bed’. That matrimonial bed was a bold decision, but the smiling porter seemed to solemnize it. He wasn’t really a porter, he was Silvio, the son of the owner. As the lift door closed they all started speaking in Italian at the same time, so that Colin missed what Silvio was saying, quickly and humorously, to Archie — it was something to do with the telephone. Archie frowned and shook his head as if to close the subject, and shifted to give Colin a wide close-up smile. It was a smile that seemed full of shared expectancy. Colin blushed and looked down, abashed by the presence of Silvio, who was laughing contentedly.

At the end of a narrow landing Silvio unlocked a door and went ahead of them into a room of which all Colin saw at first was a wardrobe and a shuttered window and the high coving of the ceiling. Archie strolled in after him, with a quick scanning glance, and Colin, his smile in the mirror looking almost sarcastic with tension, came last. ‘Ah…’ he said, as Silvio brandished the TV control and then crossed to open the bathroom door. ‘Um…!’ — for a minute Colin’s Italian failed him; while Archie was saying, ‘Perfetto!’ and pressing an absurdly large tip into Silvio’s hand. ‘Um…yes,’ said Colin, scrambling to repossess himself and looking round, as the door closed and they were left alone, at the wardrobe, and the bowl of fruit, and the two high bolstered single beds.

Next page: It wasn’t clear who’d won the game, once they’d played it.