‘Do you mind if I open the window?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘You wouldn’t rather have the air conditioning on?’

‘The window’s fine.’

Was this how it was going to be between us? Stilted conversation and surly, monosyllabic answers?

I pressed the button and lowered the window. Warm air rushed in. I glanced at Joe. His face was as rigid as a mannequin’s. Fine. Good. Be like that.

We jolted over a speed bump and queued for the exit barrier. Joe was staring pointedly ahead, I rested my elbow on the door frame and my chin on my knuckles and looked through the side window. Crows were pecking amongst the dusty grass at the verges. We moved forwards painfully slowly.

‘Is this your first time in Sicily?’ Joe asked. He put on his sunglasses and pushed them up his nose. As I looked at him, I was struck once again by the whiteness of his hair. Last time I saw Joe, his hair had been black and wavy. Before we had Daniel, I used to wash it for him sometimes. He liked me to massage his head, my fingers slippery with conditioner, and afterwards, if the hair washing hadn’t led to sex, which it sometimes did, I’d rinse his hair with the shower head and then blow dry it for him. I’d known Joe’s head intimately, every lump and bump of it. I knew his hair; its texture and its whorls. In all the time we were together, I’d never found a single white hair on Joe’s head.

‘Edie?’ Joe asked again, definite irritation in his voice now. ‘I asked if you’d been to Sicily before?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I mean, no. No, I haven’t.’

We’d been planning to come to the island the year Daniel died; he was supposed to celebrate his sixth birthday here, in the villa where Joe used to spend his childhood holidays. Anna and Anna’s mother were going to be there and other relatives from the Italian side of the family who I’d never met. It was going to be a big celebration of a holiday. All kinds of treats and outings and parties had been planned: picnics and days on the beach and a visit to a nearby hilltop city to watch a festival. We never made it to Sicily that year, of course, and Joe’s grandmother had died soon after, and Joe and I divorced and all our plans had come to nothing.

‘What about Italy?’ Joe asked. ‘Have you ever been to Italy?’

‘Florence, once, with the school I work at.’

‘Right.’

‘It was an art trip, Fitz – Miss Fitzpatrick – the friend I live with, she arranged it. We travelled by coach.’

He didn’t respond.

‘We saw lots of statues.’

Nothing.

‘And churches.’