After the signings, exhausted from visiting three booths and attending to his readers for hours, thinking all the while of Laura, Barclays walked back to his hotel on Passeig de Gràcia and waited for the Italian woman to email him so they could meet. In fifteen years of happy marriage, Barclays had never been unfaithful to his wife, and in thirty years of appearing at book fairs, he had never met a reader as beautiful and charming as Laura.