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The two men ran after me. I continued making as much noise as I could, overturning some trash cans along the way, hoping the noise of the rolling metal, plus my screaming, would alert someone. It did. By the time I reached the corner of the main street, doors had opened and several people appeared on the street, yelling at the two men to stop. It worked. The men chasing me immediately took off in the opposite direction.

After watching them disappear I sank to the curb. I sat shaking, the adrenaline still pumping through me, my head and ears pounding. I hadn’t yet allowed myself to fully acknowledge the fear I felt. That would come later. Mainly I was embarrassed. What must the small crowd gathered round me think of this crazy woman who’d run screaming up the street?

But that seemed not to be what they were thinking about at all. What was on their minds was my well-being. I was touched by their concern and kindness as they helped me compose myself, asking over and over again if I was all right.

Si, si, grazie, I am all right, I said. I kept repeating it—Si, si, grazie. I am all right—until the crowd dispersed.

But I wasn’t all right. Something had happened to me, something that left me feeling vulnerable in a way I’d not experienced for a long time. It was as though a tiny hairline crack had suddenly appeared in the self-sufficient image I had constructed over the years. Not since my mother’s death ten years earlier had I felt so painfully aware of how little control I had when it came to the grand scheme of my life.

Things happen, I thought, and we respond. That’s what it all comes down to. To believe anything else, as far as I could tell, was simply an illusion.

Over the next few days I found myself unable to stop thinking about the incident on the Via Borgognona. First came the self-recriminations, and the attempt to deal with feelings of guilt that somehow I was responsible for what happened. My thoughts raced: I should have taken another street. I shouldn’t have been wandering around alone. I should have been more alert. I should have carried pepper spray or Mace. I shouldn’t have looked at the man in the café. Intellectually, I knew none of these things applied, knew that I hadn’t done anything wrong or anything I hadn’t done safely a hundred times in the past. Still, a voice kept saying: My fault. My fault. My fault.

Worse, however, was the loss of confidence that settled over me. I was overcome with a heavy inert feeling, one that prevented me from entering into life with any sense of trust. I tried putting into action the theorem I’d attributed to Albert back in Oxford—M=EA (Mishap equals Excellent Adventure)—but to no avail. I simply hadn’t the energy or desire necessary to make such a plan work.

Now when I was out on the streets, I was so busy looking for danger that I barely saw the city. At night I slept with the bathroom light on, comforted by its dull glow through the half-closed door. Sleep, however, did not refresh me. I awoke fatigued. It was trauma fatigue, I decided one morning after waking to a memory of the chronic tiredness I’d felt years earlier after serious back surgery.

It was time, I decided, to get out of Rome.

Intellectually I knew Rome wasn’t the problem; that I was the problem. Still, when I changed my train tickets to Florence for an earlier departure, I breathed a sigh of relief. From Florence I planned to take the bus to Siena, a town I remembered as quiet and serene, one bereft of motor scooters and dangerous situations.

In the two days left before my departure, I spent my time taking bus tours organized for tourist groups. That way I was never alone. In the evening I followed the routine of eating dinner at a fancy hotel near mine and then returning to my room to sit outside on an adjoining veranda.

The veranda had come as a pleasant surprise in an otherwise disappointing choice of hotel. I’d discovered the outdoor balcony only a few days earlier, after opening