Joe was sitting on the bed beside me. I guessed he must have been shaking me to wake me, although he wasn’t touching me now.

I pushed the hair back off my face.

‘Sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’

‘It’s okay,’ Joe said.

‘I dreamed… I… I dreamed of…’

‘I get dreams like that too,’ Joe said.

We sat together, side by side, staring at the moonlight on the floorboards. Then Joe reached across the inches that divided us and gently took hold of my hand, curling his fingers around mine.

36

The next morning, Joe and I were gentle with one another, trying to be considerate of the other’s feelings.

Joe made coffee and passed a cup to me and I cut bread and unwrapped cheese and sliced tomatoes and laid them out on the table for breakfast. We sat on opposite sides of the table and drank our coffee and ate. We didn’t talk, but we were comfortable.

When he had finished eating, Joe poured more coffee into each of our cups, then he sat down again in the same place, his hands on the tabletop, palms down. There was a tiny crescent-moon of dirt at the top of each of his fingernails; the skin of his arms was tanned a deep brown.

‘There’s nothing to be lost,’ he said at last, ‘in finding out how much it would cost to renovate the villa.’

‘No,’ I agreed, ‘nothing to be lost at all.’

Signora Romano’s face, her shocked expression when we told her we weren’t ready to sell, jumped into my mind, the things she’d said about her father. Would it really be the end of her world if we didn’t sell the villa to her? Surely not. She could always find somewhere else. It wasn’t as if there was any shortage of homes for sale in Sicily.

Joe did a little drumroll with his fingertips.

There was a silence. We sipped our coffee.

I took a deep breath. Then I said: ‘We wouldn’t have to change much, just bring it back to how it used to be.’ I moved my hand across the table until the tips of my fingers were almost, but not quite, touching his. ‘We could make a list of what needs doing, all the separate work, and price it individually. Is that what you had in mind?’

Joe curled his fingers into his palms, taking them away from mine. ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ he said, ‘yes.’

‘We could make a start now, this morning!’

‘I was planning to drive into Ragusa this morning to report the painting missing.’

I withdrew my hand. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘yes, of course, you said. You go. I can make a start on the list while you’re gone. That’s a better use of our time.’

I smiled as if that was the outcome I’d hoped for all along.