‘I knew they’d be here,’ Joe said, reading my mind with the same prescience as before. ‘There were always cats here. The Ganzarias encouraged them because they kept the vermin down.’ He took a step forward. He put a hand on one of the two wide doors that stood slightly ajar in front of the building. ‘My grandfather turned the stables into garages,’ he said. ‘And the groom’s cottage,’ he nodded to the roof of a slightly taller building, beyond the stables, ‘is where the Ganzarias used to live.’

‘This is what you wanted to show me?’ I asked.

‘There’s more.’

Joe took hold of the door handle and pulled, using all his weight. The door creaked and complained as he dragged it over the cobbles. Swallows darted out of the gloom, so close that I felt the draught of their wings on my face. They swooped like arrows, lining themselves on the spine of the roof and the treadle of the weathervane, a three masted ship in full sail.

Inside the building, nests of fledglings fell silent.

Joe stepped inside and disappeared into the darkness. ‘Come and see,’ he called.

I followed him across the cobbles.

The interior was almost pitch-dark, thick with the smell of oil and hay and bird droppings. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust and then slowly something took shape in front of me: it was a car, one patch of its bonnet lit by a faint ray of sunlight coming through a crack in the roof. The tarpaulin that had covered it lay crumpled to one side. Apart from the tyres, all completely flat, it looked intact.

‘My grandfather’s car!’ Joe said. He began to circle it. ‘She was all wrapped up and protected from the elements. She looks almost as good as new.’

He came around, in and out of dim rays of light, his fingers trailing tenderly on the car’s bodywork.

‘Is it the same car you remember?’ I asked. ‘The one your grandfather used to collect you from the airport?’

‘Yes.’

The car Daniel and Joe were going to drive around Sicily.

‘What kind of car is it?’ I asked.

Daniel knew. He knew exactly what it was. He knew a ream of facts about it. I felt him somewhere nearby; come in from the garden, hidden now by the darkness.

‘It’s an Alfa Romeo Disco Volante,’ Joe said. ‘An absolute classic.’