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Helmut studied the professor. Then he sighed and extended his hand to shake on the deal. 'Okay. For a forty-eight-hour period, your daughter will be the Juliet to my son's Romeo.'

Bacci adjusted his tie again. Then he took Helmut's hand. 'Agreed,' he said. 'On one condition.'

'Yes?'

'Isabella must never know of this.'

OVERTHE PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS ISABELLA BACCI HAD THOUGHT often about her father's surprise engagement. He and Maria would be married in less than three months. But now she had to concentrate on tying up any loose ends before she went on holiday tomorrow. As she took Signor Martini and his wife to the children's ward of MilanUniversityHospital, she stopped herself checking her watch. I've got plenty of time, she told herself. So long as I leave by four I can be in and out of the apartment before Leo returns. And there'll still be time to pack for Antibes.

When she reached the security door, Isabella pushed all personal concerns from her mind, placed her hand over a palm-shaped black pad and waited while the DNA scanner read the genetic material in her skin. Within seconds it had decoded the five hundred and ninety-seven genes that specified her facial features, and a computer-generated image of her face appeared on the small monitor. Immediately it was matched to the image in her personnel file and the door opened. She turned to the young couple and smiled. 'The hospital takes security very seriously, especially around the maternity and children's wards.' The procedure was standard. Many institutions had similar measures in place.

Signor Martini noted the model of the system. 'The Interface 3000 isn't foolproof,' he said. 'I work in the business. I could get the hospital an upgrade to the Interface 3500.' He began to explain the weakness of the current system but his wife rested a hand on his arm and he fell silent.

Isabella led them through the main children's ward to the private rooms and stopped at 109. Through the glass door, Isabella saw Sofia climb out of her hospital bed and walk unsteadily to the adjoining bathroom. The seven-year-old looked frail in her sky-blue nightdress and head bandage, but she was recovering well from the accident -- a delivery van had backed into her bicycle. As Sofia neared the bathroom door she paused by the mirrored glass on the wall and frowned at her reflection, as though she were trying to remember something.

Isabella opened the door. 'Sofia, it's me,' Isabella said. 'Dr Bacci. Isabella.'

The little girl smiled when she recognized the voice, then pointed back to her own reflection. 'I know her,' she said triumphantly. 'She's my friend.'

Isabella crouched down until her face was level with the child's. She observed her own reflection: olive complexion, shoulder-length black hair, strong nose, lopsided smile and large brown eyes. Then she reached out and touched the glass. 'That's my face,' she said. Then she pointed to the little girl's paler features. 'And that's yours, Sofia.' Finally she turned and beckoned to the couple waiting in the doorway. 'Sofia, you've got some special visitors.'

The child beamed at them. 'Ciao, I'm Sofia. Who are you?'

The woman bit her lip, unable to speak. The man put his arms round his wife and smiled at Sofia, a sweet, sad smile. He bent and stroked the child's cheek. 'Darling, it's Mummy and Daddy.'

'PROSOPAGNOSIA,' ISABELLA BACCI REPEATED SLOWLY, WATCHING Sofia's parents mouth the word as they tried to come to terms with their daughter's condition. Ever since she'd been only a little older than Sofia, Isabella had been torn between becoming a research scientist like her father or a doctor like her grandfather. The latter had teased her that scientists were dreamers, idealists who achieved little in their lifetime: only doctors had the power to cure people. But her father never tired of reminding her that without research scientists doctors had no power. The debate had lost its meaning when her mother died of an aneurysm and no one, scientist or doctor, had been able to help. In the end Isabella had decided to become both.

Now, sitting in her office in the neurology department, she wished she could do more for Sofia. 'Try to understand that your daughter's been very lucky. Her head injuries were severe, but apart from this isolated aberration, her brain functions are unaffected. The surgeons are convinced the physical scarring will be negligible.'

The mother, calmer now, nodded thoughtfully.

Isabella pointed to the screen showing the PET scan of Sofia's brain. 'This region on the right side of the brain is the infero-temporal cortex. It's a highly evolved area where visual and memory systems mesh. The inferotemporal cortex and the fusiform gyms specialize in the recognition of human faces. It's their sole function. This inborn skill allows a newborn to recognize its mother at only a few weeks' old. This is the area of Sofia's brain that was damaged in the accident.

'Prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, is rare. People with autism and Asperger's sometimes have it. A few sufferers are born with the condition and some, like Sofia, acquire it from a specific head trauma.'

'How long will it last?' the father asked.

Isabella considered how she might feel if she was unable to recognize her loved ones' faces. Faces that even an inanimate security computer could identify. She thought of Leo and of how she had been able only recently to stop obsessing about his face. The irony didn't make her smile. 'I'm afraid Sofia will probably be face-blind for the rest of her life. Research is being conducted into prosopagnosia all the time, and I've been working in the area for a while, but currently there's no cure.'

'She'll never recognize us?' the mother said.

'Not your faces. Not until a cure is found. But she'll recognize your voices, the way you walk and all the other little things. Don't forget, Sofia has all her other faculties. There's nothing wrong with her memory or vision. She's just unable to recognize facial features -- including her own. She'll adapt.'

'How do you know?' Sofia's father said bitterly.

'That's a good question.' Isabella stood up and walked across to the glass-fronted refrigerated cabinet on the other side of her office. A tray of stainless-steel canisters sat on the top shelf. She opened the door, selected one and rested it on her palm. The steel felt cool on her skin. 'Research Sample: Amigo Extract' was typed in bold on a white label. As she placed the cannister on the desk in front of Sofia's parents the tablets rattled inside it.

'This drug is one of the latest research advances. It's derived from an illegal recreational drug called Amigo, an offshoot of Ecstasy. Amigo was created for the club scene on the west coast of the States and is designed to give the user a euphoric high that makes them see everyone as their friend -- hence the name. It has an interesting side-effect, though. It causes temporary face-blindness.

'Colleagues in the States isolated and extracted the relevant components to create a drug that only induces the side-effect.' She tapped the canister. 'Assuming our ethics committee gives us the go-ahead, we plan to use these research tablets on healthy volunteers. By monitoring their brain activity while the temporary prosopagnosia kicks in and then recedes, we hope to understand better what switches are being triggered in the brain. I've tried the drug myself and the best way of describing the experience was that individual faces became unrecognizable. I could still work out who some familiar people were by their hair colour and clothing, but the overall pattern of their faces meant nothing to me. This might help you understand.' She reached into a drawer in her desk, pulled out four small pebbles and stood them on the desk. 'Suppose these pebbles have names -- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.' She waited a moment then jumbled them up, and returned three to the drawer. She pointed to the remaining pebble. 'Can you tell me this one's name?'

The father shrugged. 'No. They all look the same.'

'It's Mark.' Isabella put the other pebbles back on the table. 'Mark is slightly bigger and bluer than the others, with a distinctive crack on the side. These pebbles are as different from each other as human faces are, but we're not programmed to recognize them as a cohesive whole. The problem for people with prosopagnosia is that human faces look as indistinguishable to them as pebbles do to the rest of us.

"The point is, the condition may be frustrating and embarrassing, but it's not debilitating. Many people born with mild prosopagnosia don't even realize they have it. They live perfecdy good lives thinking they have a poor memory for faces - although prosopagnosia has nothing to do with memory. I can tell you with confidence that Sofia will learn to cope. And, trust me, so will you.'

Only when Isabella had answered Sofia's parents' remaining questions and walked them back to Reception did she check her watch again. Before she left for her holiday she had to complete her handovers. She would have to hurry, but she still had time to get into and out of the apartment before he returned.

LEO'S APARTMENT, WHICH HAD BEEN ISABELLA'S HOME UNTIL A FEW weeks ago, was near Corso Italia on the southern side of Milan. She still had the keys. She had lived there for almost a year and, despite her efforts to remain detached, was so preoccupied with memories that she didn't notice the tall blond man watching her from the other side of the road. She stepped into the cool of the familiar lobby and took the lift to the fourth floor. When she unlocked the door to the apartment she was shocked by how completely the interior had been transformed.

The hall, which had boasted a battered leather chair, a cluttered desk, posters from the Uffizi and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was now an essay in minimalism. The freshly painted walls were uniformly off-white and unadorned. The wooden floor had been polished so it gleamed and the only piece of furniture was a single stylish glass table, on which stood a telephone and a crystal vase of white lilies; their orange stamens had been cut off so that they couldn't stain anything that might brush against them. The only untidy features were Isabella's guitar and two cardboard packing cases by the door to the lounge; even the boxes had been taped shut and arranged like a work of art. A scribbled yellow Post-it note was stuck to one: Tzzy. Giovanna kindly packed all your belongings for you. Please leave your keys on die hall table when you leave. Hope we can stay friends. Leo.'

Isabella felt hollow inside when she looked at the old guitar that had once belonged to her mother, and the two boxes, which contained the last vestiges of her life with the man she had travelled to Italy to marry. She walked past them into the lounge. Giovanna had changed everything in here, too. Like a dog marking its territory, she had stamped her identity on every square inch, using her money to eradicate all trace of Isabella -- and even Leo -- from the apartment. All the old furniture, including the huge sagging couch, which Isabella had disliked but Leo had loved, was gone. In its place a matching symphony of bland but unquestionably expensive neutral rugs and cream leather furniture had appeared. Isabella hated it.

Her eyes went to the smart Denon DVD player in the corner. Why hadn't Giovanna put that into a box for her to take away? Probably because it suited the new decor, she thought. Isabella had bought it to watch her beloved classic movies a month before Leo had dropped the bombshell that he was going back to his childhood sweetheart. 'I have to, Izzy. You must understand. She needs me more than you do.'

On the mantelpiece there was a picture of Leo with Giovanna. She and Giovanna were so different that Isabella felt a twinge of insecurity. While she was dark and athletic, with strong, asymmetrical features and a lopsided smile, Giovanna was fair and petite with a pretty button nose. And while Isabella was committed to her work, Giovanna wasn't afraid to express her need. Another factor, Isabella understood now, was that Giovanna's wealthy father was an influential judge who had promised to aid Leo's legal career. Isabella's father was a brilliant but eccentric scientist, who had spent all of his savings on trying to convince the world of his genius.

Thinking of her father cheered Isabella. His engagement to the independent Maria proved that, when it came to love, anything was possible.

Wandering through the lounge, she contemplated whether to take the DVD player. She was the movie buff. Leo didn't even have any DVDs. The shelves were empty, except for one or two ornaments. Even the few leather-bound books looked brand new and unread. Three glossy magazines, again untouched, lay on the coffee table, Vogue at the top. The face on the cover made Isabella smile, especially when she read the caption: 'The Billion Dollar Face: Is Phoebe the Face of the Millennium?'

In the corner was an elegant wooden filing cabinet. She opened it and was surprised to see reams of catalogues for curtain, wallpaper and upholstery fabrics, all indexed alphabetically. Everything was so organized, so perfect, that she felt a second rush of insecurity. Was this another reason why Leo had chosen Giovanna over her?

Beep, beep.

The sound of the car horn made her check her watch. Leo had said they wouldn't be back until six and the last thing she wanted was to see him or Giovanna. She moved to the large window overlooking the street and the distant spires of the Duomo. Two huge hoardings faced her from the opposite apartment block. One advertised a car, the other fashion. The tag-line, 'Pure Valkyrie by Odin', was written across the bottom of the fashion advertisement and the face on the Vogue cover smiled out at her.

Beep, beep.

She looked down and was relieved to see Phoebe sitting in her silver open-top Mercedes. Her long blonde hair hung loose to her shoulders and she wore dark glasses, but her cheekbones made her instantly recognizable as the model in the vast poster and on the magazine's cover.