‘Why don’t you want to take it?’ Maria asks shrilly.

He ignores her and ducks outside, the dew and rain on the grass soaking through his trainers. ‘Hello?’ he says into the phone.

‘Joe,’ an Italian woman’s voice says.

‘Speaking,’ he says. His heart feels like it’s pumping electricity through his body.

‘It’s Carina, sorry – new number,’ she says. Carina lives a few villas down from them. They know each other to pass the time of day with, to take post in for, but he’s not sure she’s ever called him.

‘How are you fixed for September?’ she asks him.

‘We’re fully booked,’ he says. ‘Why?’

‘Oh – it’s nothing. We have a couple here who wanted to check if their family could join them – spill over into your villa.’

‘Sorry,’ he says, thinking he could do without all bookings, that he wants to fence off his villa forever, and certainly never stay in it again himself. ‘Sorry,’ he adds again, just wanting to get off the phone. Cathy and Frannie will be concerned, sitting inside, pretending everything’s fine when it’s anything but.

‘No worries. You hear about the development?’ Carina says lightly. ‘While I am speaking to you.’

‘What development?’ Joe pulls the hair back from his forehead.

‘The woods behind your villa, at the side of mine,’ she says. ‘They’re finally developing. They got planning permission last week.’

Joe thinks he’s going to faint. ‘Nobody told me,’ he says, like that will undo it, this news that’s landed in his lap from nowhere. ‘Aren’t they supposed to say?’

‘I’m sure the ancient Italian planning system has written you a letter you won’t understand,’ Carina laughs, then rings off. Joe stands there in his parents’ garden, wishing, for just a second, that he didn’t have a mother and a father who had already experienced too much tragedy. He might otherwise reach out to them. He extends an arm into the darkness, imagining somebody could grasp it, somebody who could help him. He stands there for a second, arm outstretched, listening to the rain.

‘What’re you doing?’ Cathy says, emerging in the lit-up doorway, her face concerned. Her eyes travel to his extended arm and her frown deepens.

‘They’re digging up the woods. Development,’ Joe says, aware he isn’t making any sense.

‘What?’

‘They’re going to find it,’ he says, just as Frannie emerges.

A thick silence descends between them.

‘We need to go,’ Joe says.

‘Do you know,’ Cathy says, walking back into the bar, ‘we have to deal with something back at our cottages, sorry,’ she says quickly to their parents, her tone so firm it’s impossible to argue with. ‘We have to … The neighbours have said Macca is barking.’ It’s a thin lie, but it seems to pass, because Cathy never lies. She gets her coat and ushers out Joe and Frannie. Their parents might be speaking, might be saying goodbye, or wondering what’s going on, but Joe is on another planet, reliving and reliving the phone call, wishing he had appreciated last week, yesterday, when things were bad but not this bad.