‘Then I know. How could your father tell Bethany he would look to Ruby-May, when he is asleep? Why does he not remember the red wine? Because he did not choose to drink it.’

My God! Bethany was looking after Ruby-May. And then she drugged our father after Ruby-May died, to make sure he wouldn’t remember. He would literally have had no memory of that afternoon. And to complete her lie, she got him drunk and then she pretended to take him for a memory test.

I look down at an artificial marsh, floating just below me; a coot steps through the rushes and I can smell the sweet, sharp scent of spearmint.

‘Lasciate ogni speranza o voi che entrate.’

‘What?’

‘Is something we say in this region of Italy,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what to do with this knowledge. I think, I will ask to Bethany. Give her the chance to tell the truth. I follow her to the beach, I try and talk to her. But she laugh at me. She laugh at me and we are talking about the death of a child – a child I loved more than I love myself! So I shake her. I only want her to say that it is her fault, that she is sorry.’

The coot leaves the haven of the marsh, and launches itself into the open water, breaking the scum of oil that marbles the surface. I can’t see any chicks. Maybe they’ve grown up and left already.

‘But she fall, she hit her head. I do not mean to hurt her. I am afraid she die. I panic, I leave her there. Then I hate myself, so I go early to the police station to say them what happen. But I hear one of the officers, Agente Martelli, he pick up his free coffee in a bar and he say they find an English woman on the beach. So I know she is alive and I think, if she tell someone, then it all come out: what I do to her, but also what she do to Ruby-May.’

I feel myself swaying. I take a step back from the water’s edge.

‘So I go home to my family and I wait. I cancel my flight to Bristol. I tell my tutor I never come back. I do nothing. I sit here and I wait for you or for the police. No one. Bethany say nothing. And now you, Nick. You know the whole truth. It is up to you what you do with this knowledge.’

A couple of swans glide past. The current is choppy in the middle of the river, changeable. They struggle against it and then give up, beating their wings, harder and harder, until they laboriously free themselves from the water and fly downstream. I’d forgotten how noisy swans in flight can be.

‘Goodbye, Nick,’ Luca says, and the line goes dead.