as you drove us here,’ she told him when they joined the queue for tickets, ‘I’m paying the entrance fee.’
‘No. This was my idea. And in my world women don’t pay on a date.’
‘This isn’t a date,’ she reminded him. ‘We’re here as friends. I pay for the tickets, or no deal.’
He laughed. ‘You’re independent and impossible. And I want the pleasure of showing you Pompeii, so what choice do I have?’ He held his hand out for her to shake. ‘OK, it’s a deal. Provided you let me buy you a gelati.’
She shook his hand, and her palm tingled at the contact. ‘Deal,’ she said, hearing the huskiness in her own voice and hoping that Orlando hadn’t noticed.
When she’d paid for their tickets, they wandered through into the old town. There were beautiful frescoes and mosaic floors everywhere. ‘It’s gorgeous. You wouldn’t think this place was over two thousand years old,’ she said, full of wonder.
‘Nearer three,’ Orlando said, ‘as it was first occupied in the eighth century BC. Some of the ruined buildings were actually ruins before the eruption.’
‘Incredible.’ Though there was something that made her uncomfortable. ‘Those bodies on the floor…where did they come from?’
‘They’re plaster casts,’ he told her. ‘The ash from the volcano fell and buried the people and animals, then hardened round them. The bodies decomposed and left a space behind in the ash. In the nineteenth century, the archaeologist Giuseppi Fiorelli had the idea of pumping plaster in to the cavities so we could see what was under the ash.’
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