harbour_dog watches them go with an expression of profound betrayal as Aurora and Flavio turn from the gate and aim themselves downhill. The ice-cream smell is real — definitively, magnificently real — and it is coming from somewhere below the terrace, near the boats. Flavio points with his boutonnière. Aurora nods with the gravity of a field commander. They go. The cobblestones are steep, which only makes their legs work faster. At the bottom, beside a blue-and-white cart parked at the harbour's edge, a young man in a long white apron is scooping gelato with great professional focus. He has not yet noticed two formally dressed toddlers descending toward him at considerable speed. He has also not noticed that three metres to his left, an extremely large seagull is making off with an entire bread roll, waddling sideways with the sovereign confidence of a creature that has never once been successfully shooed from anything.