The streets were far from empty. Traffic whizzed by at the pace that seemed the pride of European cities. Small, fast cars and daredevil taxis. People scattered the sidewalks, rushing toward some oasis of nightlife. Still, Ashley thought she could hear the echo of her own footsteps. Perhaps it was because so many feet had walked the Roman streets for so many centuries. Ashley didn’t care much for history or tradition. Tennis history perhaps — Evert, Graf, Gibson, Perry, these names meant more to her than Caesar, Cicero or Caligula. She rarely thought of her own past, much less of antiquity. Ashley was a woman who focused on the present. Until Spencer had come back into her life, she had thought little about tomorrow.

In her youth she had concentrated fiercely on the future and what she would do if… Now that she had done it, Ashley had come to savour each day at a time. Still, the future was closing in on her, and the past was never far behind.

At ten she had been a hustler. Skinny and streetwise, she had talked her way out of trouble when it was possible, and ran away when it wasn’t. Growing up in the tough neighbourhood of L.A., Ashley had been introduced to the seamier side of life early. She’d tasted her first beer when she should have been studying rudimentary math.

Her mother, a quiet, determined woman who worked nights cleaning office buildings, was precious to her. Her sister, three years her junior, was her pride and self-assumed responsibility. There was no father, and even the memory of him had faded before Ashley reached mid-childhood. Always, she had considered herself the head of the family, with all the duties and rights that it entailed. No one corrected her. It was for her family that she studied and kept on the right side of the law—though she brushed the line occasionally. It was for them that she promised herself, when she was still too young to realize the full extent of her vow, to succeed. One day she would move them out, buy them a house, bring her mother up off her knees. The picture of how hadn’t been clear, only the final result. The answer had been a ball and racket.