The boat drew up, gleaming with water droplets and polished chrome, its tapered prow giving it the look of a miniature yacht. It was empty apart from the man driving it—also in reflective shades—and Olivia, wearing a pale orange shift dress and high strappy sandals. She stepped down carefully, her heavily made-up face composed in a smile. Again, if Leah squinted, she could’ve been looking at a younger clone of Charlotte. The mother-daughter resemblance was even more pronounced than the last time she’d been here.

“Auntie Lee!” Olivia brushed Leah’s cheek with a cool, perfumey kiss. “Welcome back.”

Leah swallowed, unable to speak. Her niece was greeting her as she’d been trained to welcome all guests of Il Mandarino: as if they were a temporary member of a special family.

Except Leah was one of the family. It was just that only Amy had ever made her feel that way.

—

As they sped away from Malcesine, Leah gripped the damp edges of her leather seat and stared around. She’d forgotten the gasping freshness of the air out on the water, compared to the heat of the shore. How the lake narrowed and then dramatically widened, so that the villages on opposite shores seemed flung apart. And she’d forgotten how, as you began to sail around the huge rocky outcrop that hid Il Mandarino from the rest of Lake Garda, there was the sense of a curtain being slowly drawn back.

There was no mention of Amy during their journey. Olivia gushed about Il Mandarino, how much it had grown, a prestigious award they’d recently won. Silently, Leah counted the months since Amy’s death. Nine. To her, it was still savagely raw. She’d only just emerged from a paralysis of shock and finally felt able to come to Italy. But perhaps she shouldn’t have expected everyone here to be constantly talking about Amy. Maybe life had to resume at some point, especially for a seventeen-year-old.

“I’m pretty much in charge of customer relations now,” Olivia said, pinning down her hair against the wind.

“What about school?” Leah asked, feeling like the killjoy aunt. “Or did you—”

“Well, that’s over for the summer. My tutor won’t be back for eight weeks, thank God! I can be all about Il Mandarino for the whole peak season!”

Leah felt a deep, uneasy pang. Even since her last visit, there was a ramped-up corporateness to Olivia’s turns of phrase, her measured smile, the fact that her dress was the same shade of orange as the flag flying from the boat.

“Aren’t you hot, Auntie Lee?” she asked, eyeing Leah’s standard outfit of black jeans and black T-shirt as if she was a dark smear on the sunny landscape.

“I’m fine,” Leah lied.