“I’d ended up sprawled across his chest, which was actually broader than it looked. Navy blue is a slimming colour, I guess.”

“I wondered what I’d end up looking like once I bloomed. I couldn’t even guess. If I had to be stuck in my own skinny, gawky, coltish body forever… well. It probably wouldn’t be so bad.I wouldn’t mind a little more in the chest, though. But wild horses wouldn’t drag that out of me. Ever.”

“Your past wouldn’t frighten me,” I said, buckling my seat belt across my lap. “I’m guessing I’d be more appalled than anything.”

“I adore that pink, it is the navy blue of India!”

“…but there they lay, sprawled across the field, craved far more by the vultures than by wives.”

“A statue of Arturo Prat, hero of the Chilean Navy, surveyed it all. From under his statue I look up onto those fragrant wooded hills. The shanty houses blur into a pastiche of colour, yellows and reds, cobalt and purple. The washing lines strung across the stairways and hung from balconies echo the ships' flags fluttering in the harbour.This is a city of the muses. For poets, painters and composers. This is the artists' enclave. This is Venice and Florence waiting to be explored, and I dream it still.”