The last album I investigated included pictures of the new, bigger swimming pool with its overlapping circles, under construction and later, pictures of Cece and Joe, as children, playing in it. At last, I found what I’d been looking for: a close-up of the Madonna del Mare, that, according to the writing on the back (I translated with the dictionary), had been taken after its last professional clean, ‘a process made necessary by an accumulation of tar deposited by decades of cigarette smoke and other dirt’ on the surface of the image.

For the first time, I looked into the face of the villa’s Madonna. It wasn’t a great photograph, the colours were faded, and I couldn’t make out any of the details, but I could see enough to make me realise that I would like to see the real picture very much indeed.

38

As the afternoon drew to its close, I went out into the heat, to the old stables, where I found Francesco and Joe working companionably together, their heads hidden inside the Alfa Romeo’s open bonnet. Francesco had set up his phone on the dusty window-ledge and it was playing music.

I watched for a moment, enjoying seeing the two of them together, then I felt a little tug, Daniel, reminding me that he was present.

I called ‘Ciao!’ to let them know I was there and their two heads popped up; Francesco’s dark hair silvered by cobwebs, Joe’s silver hair stained dark in places by oil. Joe had given Francesco an old T-shirt to wear to protect his clothes. In the gloom of the stable, broken as it was by shafts of strong sunlight, I couldn’t tell who was enjoying himself more.

After Francesco had left, cycling his bike back to Porta Sarina, Joe and I returned to the stables. While Joe tidied up, I walked round to the caretaker’s cottage, squeezing between the saplings and creepers. It was an attractive, stone building with a concreted yard. A child’s tricycle, the plastic sun-bleached and the metal rusted, lay on its side amongst the weeds pushing through the cracks.

At the boundary of the yard was a drystone wall. On the other side of that wall, the villa’s perimeter wall ended and beyond was a drop into the open sea. The rocky shelf, at this point, was too high and wide for boats to come close to the headland, or for swimming to be safe. Leading up to the shelf was a grassy area

‘This was where the Ganzarias kept chickens and goats,’ Joe said, coming up behind me.

‘We could do that,’ I said.

‘Chickens and goats?’

‘Why not? And a donkey maybe, for the children to ride.’

Joe leaned down to pick up an old fence post that had rotted at its base. He stood it upright, balancing it beneath the flat of his hand. It trailed a tail of rusting wire.