Giuseppe Mastruzzo, who has just returned to London after nearly a year in a hermitage and several monasteries in northern Italy, has been attempting to mediate between Lauren and me since our blow out last weekend. I told him I wanted us to split up, and she told him she wanted us to stay together. Facing an impasse, he suggested to her to leave me in peace for a while—not to insist on seeing me, not to call, not to write, not to send me anything. By and large, she has obliged. I really owe him one. However, she has started calling my mother, angling for both sympathy and influence over me. “There is no-one closer to Ranko than you,” Lauren keeps telling my mother, correctly. When I come home, I find the poor woman in tears. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobs. Although Giuseppe knows how close I am to my mother, he has evidently neglected to tell Lauren not to call her, either.