In the Piazza della Rotunda, Dexter‘s mother sat at a café table, a novel held loosely in one 

hand, her eyes closed and her head tilted back and to the side like a bird  to catch the last of 

the afternoon sun. Rather than arrive straightaway, Dexter took a moment to sit amongst the 

tourists on the steps of the Pantheon and watch as the waiter approached and picked up her 

ashtray, startling her. They both laughed, and from the theatrical movement of her mouth and 

arms he could tell that she was speaking her terrible  Italian, her hand on the waiter‘s arm, 

patting  it  flirtatiously.  With  no  apparent  idea  what  had  been  said,  the  waiter  nevertheless 

grinned  and  flirted  back,  then  walked  away,  glancing  over  his  shoulder  at  the  beautiful 

English woman who had touched his arm and talked incomprehensibly.

Dexter  saw  all  this  and  smiled.  That  old  Freudian  notion,  first  whispered  at  boarding 

school, that boys were meant to be in love with their mothers and hate their fathers, seemed 

perfectly plausible to him. Everyone he had ever met had been in love with Alison Mayhew, 

and the best of it was that he really liked his father too; as in so many things, he had all the 

luck.