My whole world changes. I have spent a lot of time wondering if I am a princess who was kidnapped. This is surely proof? I feel special and wanted. I have a real father and there is a chance he may be relatively normal. Even if he has a silly-sounding name.My Italian father writes to me. I write back to him. He is a good pen pal. We decide it is now too late for him to be called Daddy, so he signs his letters Biologico. He always starts them with Ciao bella, which makes me feel exotic and special.

A year or so on, life with Barry has become unbearable. My mother decides it is time to leave England before he kills us both. I am now 14 years old.

I am getting ready for school one Tuesday morning when my mother tells me today is the day. Halfway through my English lesson I see my mother rush past the window. I raise my hand and ask to be excused. The whole class looks on in amazement as I leave. My mother and I get into her purple Ford Cortina and drive towards the coast.

We navigate with the help of the map of Europe in my Girl Guide diary. After three days we arrive in the Adriatic town of Rimini, the ancestral home of my new Italian family.

We arrange to meet my father on the beach. We are early, or he is late. I go for a swim but when I come out I realise I am lost. I am terrified I will never see my mother again, but more importantly that I will miss my appointment with my father.

I start running on the beach, looking for something I will recognise. Suddenly I feel two strong arms around me. I look up into eyes that are shockingly similar to mine.

“Ciao bella,” says my father. “I recognised you by your legs.”

I used to have a photograph my mother took of my father and me on the beach at Rimini that first summer. He was much taller than me and well built. His hair was thick and brown and slightly wavy. He had a moustache. But rather than make him look ridiculous, which I have always thought moustaches do, it made him look even more like an Italian film star.

He looked intelligent if a little out of place, fully clothed and clutching a 1920s fedora hat among all the half-naked sun-worshippers.

I remember our first embrace. He was wearing a white silk shirt, and my hair, wet from the sea, left a mark on it. I felt secure in his arms. His voice was loud and strong. With my head resting on his chest I heard it reverberate through his ribcage.

“Well,” he said looking down at me. “At least in terms of looks I can’t deny you’re my daughter.”

He stroked my cheek and I started crying, for no particular reason. He smiled: “I must be some disappointment, but please, try to hide your grief. I am a sensitive man and easily hurt.” This was the first time he made me laugh. ()

My parents embraced.

“Still smoking I see?” he said to my mother.

“Yes, aren’t you?” “No, never. Especially not in Rimini. The mayor forbids it.”

My mother laughed and raised her cigarette to her lips. “I see you’re still wearing that ridiculous hat.”

My father smiled. “Brava, you still have your legendary sense of humour.”

It was difficult to digest that this man was my father. I had got so used to pretending other people were. But here he was: the truth. I couldn’t stop listening to his voice and examining his face. He really did look like me.

I walked behind my parents, enjoying seeing them together. A group of boys whistled at me. “Ciao bella,” one of them shouted. I was amazed. It was only my father who called me that.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said my father. “This is the normal mating call of the Italian male. All over Italy you will hear it. But of course when I say it to you, it is different.”

We drove in his cream open-top Mercedes with red leather seats to my grandmother’s house. We found her sitting in her bedroom. She was so small that for the first time in my life I felt gigantic.

“La mia bambina,” she said, reaching her arms out. She hugged me with a strength I would have thought impossible for a woman her age and size; she was at least 80. Overcome with emotion, she caressed my head and covered me with kisses, all the time crying and repeating the words “La mia bambina e tornata.” My baby has come back.

She didn’t stop crying and clutching me for about an hour. When I called her “nonna”, which I’d been told was the Italian for grandmother, she said she had waited 12 years to hear that word.

After a couple of days in Rimini my mother decided to go home. My father offered to keep me in Italy and take me on a grand tour.

I think she was relieved that he showed an interest in me; maybe it made her feel less guilty about the whole saga. She had made some pretty stupid decisions, most of them involving marriages, but now my father and I were finally reunited.

He started to teach me Italian on the drive from Rimini to his home in Florence. “All you need to speak Italian is Dante, or an Italian lover, or possibly both,” he continued.

By the time we got to his flat in the Via Ricasoli I was reciting Dante like an Italian, partly because we almost crashed every time I let out an English vowel sound.

His apartment had large rooms, high ceilings and almost no furniture. He showed me into a spare room, with nothing in it except a big bed, a wardrobe and piles of books. I opened the shutters. The entire view was of the famous Duomo. It felt as if I could reach out and touch it.

It didn’t seem possible that a city could be so beautiful. When I went for a walk, every building I saw would have been a national monument at home in Newbury, which was mostly made up of supermarkets and car parks. Here they were just there, one after another, practically unnoticed.

I got back to the flat to find my father listening to an opera. “We are going,” he announced in his loud voice, “to the best restaurant in Florence.” He told me to go and get dressed “with a lot of attention” and be ready to leave in an hour. I could choose any clothes I wanted from the wardrobe in my bedroom.

I lay on my bed and wondered how he felt about having me here. He wasn’t like my grandmother; he never expressed his feelings or showed me any affection, but I supposed that if he was willing to spend time with me he must be vaguely interested in me.

I walked over to the wardrobe. Whoever had stayed here had expensive and good taste in clothes. There were dresses, skirts, shirts and trousers, all much smarter than anything my mother or I would ever wear. There was a small black skirt that fitted well, and I found a top that went with it, although it was practically see-through.

“Brava, you look like a high-class hooker,” said my father. And he assured me this was a compliment. He looked dashing in cream linen trousers and a pale green shirt. He had swapped his fedora hat for a panama, which completed the look.

As we walked arm in arm through the cobbled streets to the restaurant I told him I had seen the statue of David in the Piazza.

“He’s such a perfect specimen of a man, so beautiful,” I said.

“Yes, but how can you have such admiration for a copy?” said my father.

“A copy?”

“Yes, the real one is in the Galleria dell’Accademia in my street.”

“What’s the difference between them?”

“The real one has an erection every Wednesday at 6pm precisely. The tourists love it, especially the Americans. You should see the way they gaze at it. They queue for hours to get in.”

I blushed.

“Surely you’re not so English that you have to be embarrassed about an erection?”

“No, I just . . .”

“How many lovers have you got?”

“None.”

“Well you’re still a bit young. But you should think about the future.”

I didn’t answer but pretended to look at a church we were passing.

“Cara, don’t get offended. Sex is like any other bodily function. You are hungry, you eat. You are thirsty, you drink. What is the problem?” He laughed.

“Today I read the most wonderful thing,” he continued.

“I was doing some research into the British psyche, so as to better understand you, bella, and I found this passage, written by a young British subject over 100 years ago while visiting Florence. Listen!”

He began reciting in a high-pitched voice in an attempt to imitate a young Victorian girl.

“I often half-envy the happy life of an Italian, free from care and brought up so as to be almost devoid of conscience, indulging in every inclination natural to man, loving to be loved, and all without restraint. Yes, I sigh after such happiness.”

“All I want is for you not to sigh after it, but to have it,” said my father.

“So. Andiamo.”

He took my hand for the first time and marched me towards the restaurant. It was as if the strident action compensated for the tender one.

© Helena Frith Powell 2006

Extracted from Ciao Bella: In Search of My Italian Father, to be published on November 2 by Gibson Square at £14.99. Copies can be ordered for £13.49 with free postage from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585 or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst