“C’è un ragazzo che viene a trovarti ogni giorno e ti chiede quando torni.” There is a boy who comes to visit you every day and asks when you are coming back.

Bianchi had been turning up at Signora Bruschi’s doorstep daily.

“Credo di essere nei guai. Sono nei guai grossi.” I think I am in trouble. I am in serious trouble.

Bianchi messaged me too, sometimes several times a day, and each time I replied with words designed to prolong the chase.

“Torna presto, per favore. Ho bisogno di parlarti.”

“I will come over soon,” I promised.

But that was last year, and I never did.

Bianchi was now seventeen, and on his birthday I sent the same number of red roses. His sister, Cinzia, provided me with updates. In her eyes, I had crossed a line. The time had come to make a commitment.

Cola, meanwhile, painted another picture.

“There is only one way to end his heartache,” he wrote. “There is only one way to calm a stormy sea.”

I was never entirely certain what he meant.

I had missed Cola.

He was now nineteen and no longer the skinny boy I remembered. I suspected that he had been spending time in the gym. His body had broadened, his shoulders were stronger, and he seemed taller than ever. With temperatures stuck in the mid-thirties, he wore sunglasses, a baggy white T-shirt and black shorts that showed off his long, sun-darkened legs.

But some things had not changed.

He still drove too fast, as if the possibility of death around the next bend had never occurred to him. He pushed the bright yellow Abarth 500 along the E70 before leaving the main road and cutting through the countryside towards San Giorgio in Salici.

Before I had arrived, Cola had sent me one of his strange messages:

In love, conversation is direct but risks becoming too harsh; measure your tone. In love, you desire stability, but someone is testing you.

I wondered whether it was a warning.

San Giorgio is a highly venerated figure in Italian Catholicism. He is also St George, the patron saint of England.

“Maybe it is a sign,” Cola said, his arms stretched along the steering wheel as he reclined in his seat.

I had arrived in Verona the previous night. Cola had collected me from Villafranca Airport and wasted no time suggesting that we visit his girlfriend, Cinzia, and her brother, Bianchi.

His mother, Signora Bruschi, had been less enthusiastic.

“The boy is too young,” she warned. “He is not old enough to know what he wants. Are you not happy with your boyfriend?”

I did not have the energy to explain about Charlie. I had neither seen nor heard from him since our falling-out in Paris, and the likelihood was that I never would again. My future suddenly seemed to contain too many possible paths.

Cola had not told Cinzia that we were coming.

“She is working this morning, but it is a half-day and she will be home around lunchtime. There is always somebody at home.”

I had my reservations.

My appearance in San Giorgio in Salici might reopen wounds that had only partially healed. Bianchi still messaged me, though now perhaps only once a week. It felt as if he was slowly moving on, while leaving a door open in case I chose to meet him halfway.

Cinzia was different. She had hoped that I would satisfy her younger brother’s desires and now believed that I had treated him badly.

Would I still be welcomed in the same way as the year before?

“I must tell you that Lorenzo will be there,” Cola warned.

“Who is Lorenzo?”

“Cinzia and Bianchi’s older brother. I suggest that you ignore whatever he says.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lorenzo is trouble — for his family and for himself. He makes life difficult for Bianchi because he is gay.”

Cola ran his hand through his short hair, leaving only one hand on the steering wheel, which did little to calm my nerves.

San Giorgio in Salici emerged from the Veronese countryside, surrounded by flourishing vineyards, a village that seemed little more than a collection of houses stretching along its roads. Cola screeched to a halt on Via Celà and announced that we had arrived.

The building where Cinzia and Bianchi lived looked tired. Four storeys high, its crumbling exterior had been patched with uneven concrete repairs. The ground floor contained a garage and storage rooms; the floors above were residential.

“They live at the top,” Cola said, pointing towards a balcony that stretched across the façade.

I followed him up the communal stairs. There was no lift. On one of the walls somebody had sprayed a single word of graffiti.

Vaffanculo.

“Go fuck yourself,” Cola translated.

I had long realised that Italians rarely knocked on doors or rang bells when they were not strangers. Once Cola had made sure I was behind him, he walked straight into the apartment and moved down a long corridor lined with family photographs.

The living room was filled with more memories — framed pictures, hand-painted ceramics and Catholic iconography: crucifixes, rosaries and a statue of Padre Pio. A large dining table stood by the window, covered with fine linen and carefully arranged dinnerware.

A young man — presumably Lorenzo — was stretched across a sofa watching a game show. He looked at us but did not move. Cola greeted him with a high-five and exchanged a few words in Italian.

Lorenzo turned his eyes towards me.

There was suspicion there.

He spoke quietly to Cola, but his expression suggested that he had already decided he did not like me.

“Cinzia is not home yet,” Cola explained. “Bianchi has gone to the grocery store with his mother and will be back soon. Sit down.”

There was an obvious resemblance between Lorenzo and Bianchi, although the older brother was taller, with shorter hair and the kind of beauty that seemed almost commonplace among young Italian men.

I remembered something David Hockney once said: if handsome New York boys ranked at one hundred, handsome Italian boys were almost certainly at one thousand.

But Lorenzo lacked Bianchi’s warmth.

“He does not speak English,” Cola said. “But Bianchi has been learning at the liceo.”

I remembered the days when our conversations had relied on Cinzia’s excellent English and her willingness to translate.

“Be careful of Lorenzo,” Cola continued in a lowered voice, although Lorenzo undoubtedly knew we were discussing him. “He hates that Bianchi is gay and will not like the idea of you being here, especially if he thinks you have come to take his brother away.”

“Then why did you insist that I come, Cola?” I asked.

“They are family to me,” he replied. “Just as you are like a big brother to me, Miles. But Lorenzo spends time with bad people — criminals who go into Verona to steal from shops and tourists. I do not like it, but he is Cinzia’s brother, and I must respect him.”

Suddenly, the apartment door slammed.

“Bianchi. Vieni qui. C’è qualcuno che ti aspetta.”

“Aspettare?” he replied.

There was a muffled exchange in the kitchen, followed by the sounds of cupboards opening and closing. Then their mother laughed — a sharp, joyful shriek, as though Bianchi had said something unexpected.

“Bianchi!” Lorenzo shouted impatiently.

It is difficult to describe the expression on his face when he appeared.

He stood in the doorway.

His eyes widened. His eyebrows lifted. His mouth fell slightly open as he struggled to draw breath.

His gaze fixed on me.

“Miles,” he whispered.

“You are here.”