O’Gieblyn’s urge to return to an organised religion, and her urge to return to drinking, were not precisely aligned or concurrent, but seem, with hindsight, clearly of a piece. “Something about religion and drinking and writing feels very linked to me – something that is private.” she says now.

We are now outside the Pensione Calcina, where the art critic and writer John Ruskin took a room in 1876–1877 while working on The Stones of Venice. “It’s also where Annie Ernaux stayed when she wrote Simple Passion,” says Paul. Ernaux’s book charted an all-consuming love affair.

学海无涯, the sea of learning has no shore, I am told, and we all laugh at the difficulty of understanding another culture through its idioms and expressions. Three thousand years of Chinese culture to understand an idiom.