He opens his mouth to speak, but her father says, ‘Why can I not celebrate my granddaughter’s anniversary with my family?’

‘Do I have to spell it out?’ Matt says, through gritted teeth. ‘It’s your fucking fault she’s dead!’

There’s a moment of silence and they can hear the children shouting with delight. Joe yells, ‘Goal!’

‘No one asked me to look after her. If I’d known…’ There’s a tremor in his voice and his eyes are damp.

‘I asked you! I asked you to! And you still won’t accept responsibility, after all this time,’ Bethany says. She puts an arm round Amy’s shoulder and pulls her sister in tightly against her.

‘Look, it wasn’t his fault,’ Nick says. ‘It was an accident! He can’t remember—’

‘He was drunk! While he was meant to be looking after our daughter,’ shouts Matt.

Her dad holds his hands up and says with quiet dignity, ‘If that’s how you feel, I’ll go.’

Luca reappears. They wait for him to slide the pizza onto a chopping board and head back outside, before speaking.

Nick says, ‘You can’t turn him away! There isn’t another flight to Bristol today.’

‘I don’t care,’ Matt says.

‘Dad, if you simply accepted that you were drunk and your mind is no longer what it was, and you apologized—’

Their father shakes his head. ‘I am sorry. Of course I am sorry. But, Bethany, I have no recollection of you asking me to look after Ruby-May that afternoon.’

‘Christ! See what I mean?’ Bethany looks at Amy. ‘Your call. I’ll drive him to the ferry myself, if you want him to leave.’

She can’t do it. They’re on a remote island off the coast of a larger island, miles from mainland Italy. She can’t turn her seventy-twoyear-old father out into the heat, this far from home. Nick’s right, there won’t be another ferry, or another flight. It would be cruel.

‘There’s pizza,’ she says, and Matt glares at her.

Nick swiftly slides the trays into the oven, as if she might change her mind, and gets two beers out of the fridge. He hands one to Matt, who hesitates fractionally and then takes it. Bethany, rather pointedly, pours their father a glass of water. As Amy sits down, she sees Luca quietly heading up the stairs and hears the creak of his footsteps on the old floorboards. A few minutes later he reappears with his duffel bag slung over his shoulder and walks past the pool to Joe’s apartment. How can she make Dad leave now? She thinks of what the children will do if she sends him home in the morning. They haven’t been able to understand why they couldn’t see their granddad for the past year, and she hasn’t been able to explain. She looks down at her empty white plate.