Four days before Christmas Agnese (32) and Leonardo (17) went missing from their rural village of Montecastrilli, near Terni in Umbria.
Leonardo, an apprentice plumber, cashed his Christmas bonus, packed a small bag and was last seen climbing on to a bus.
Next day Agnese, mother of three children aged 16, 14 and six, rang her own mother to ask her to collect the children, saying she had been delayed at a medical appointment and would return home half-an-hour later than anticipated.
Agnese returned home, all right, but only on Monday after a 20-day "elopement" in Germany with Leonardo; 20 days punctuated by appeals from both their families and from Agnese's 33-year-old husband, Valentino Veltri, a lorry-driver, for them to return, safe and sound.
On her return, the exhausted Agnese took refuge in her parents' home, while Leonardo went to stay with his grandfather, Domenico.
Agnese's husband told reporters he had "forgiven" his wife, adding, however, that he wanted nothing more to do with her.
Her children had been sent off to relatives in Milan and Calabria, so Agnese had little choice but to return to her parents.
Leonardo's mother was reportedly furious with him, so he opted to head for the more accommodating welcome of his grandfather.
The latter-day Romeo and Juliet, however, were far from repentant.
Agnese announced she was pregnant by Leonardo and wanted to have his child. Leonardo said he wanted to be with Agnese and hinted he would not have returned from Germany had he known he would be separated from his lover.
Unfortunately for the runaway paramours, news of their "elopement" broke in the national press last week.
A pack of photographers, many reporters and three outside broadcast units were in the village of Montecastrilli (4,500 inhabitants) awaiting their return on Monday, much to the delight of a local bar-owner, Luciano Pinchetto, who commented: "In the last few days I've been flat out making sandwiches. We don't get this many people even on April 25th, the day of the tractor festival." While the hacks ate their sandwiches, Agnese and Leonardo's love story moved from the realm of private drama to soap story and prime-time news item. Wittingly, it seems, the main protagonists lent themselves to this metamorphosis.
On Monday Agnese sat in front of the family log fire, telling viewers of RAI 1's main evening news bulletin that it was difficult to explain what had happened, claiming that her private life was her business and not the public's, but adding: "Love is unpredictable. It's something that explodes all of a sudden and that you have to live to the full." Just a few yards down the road, her husband was sprucing himself up for an appearance on Italy's most famous TV chat show, the Maurizio Costanzo Show.
Telling friends he was off to see Maurizio, Valentino climbed into the plush limousine laid on by the television company to take him to Rome to record his version of his very public cuckolding.
Asked by one reporter how it felt to have become "famous" for having been betrayed by his wife, Valentino replied with a big smile: "Famous? Me? Who knows . . . Maybe they'll ask me to make a film about it all." Which brings us to Andy Warhol and his celebrated observation that everybody gets to be famous for a quarter of an hour.
The love story might have been a good-news item, for a quarter of an hour at least, but in truth it is also a story of provincial squalor and boredom.
It is the story of a young woman, already a mother by the age of 16 and with three children by the age of 26, who feels herself trapped and without a future. It is the story of a hardworking lorry-driver, given to occasional fits of violence on his return home. (Months ago, Agnese filed a formal complaint for abuse against Valentino, charges subsequently withdrawn).
"We're poor people", Valentino told reporters. "We try to survive. Don't talk to me about being happy . . . If she now wants to marry the boy, I'll give her away . . . I made out our bank account in her name, the car was hers and so was the sofa and the fridge. So what more did she want?"
Love, affection and, it seems, a spot on prime-time TV.