Bastard, I thought. The anger I was suppressing was changing into sadness. I swallowed back tears.

‘He is such a dick,’ I said.

Joe put his arm around me. I snuggled closer to him. We settled into one another.

‘Can I tell you something, Edie?’ Joe asked.

‘Anything.’

‘I wouldn’t say this unless I was drunk.’

‘Okay, say it.’

‘I miss my mother,’ he whispered.

‘Is that why you came down here?’

‘I didn’t want to… I couldn’t… It didn’t seem right to grieve for her in front of you.’

Tears spilled over my eyes. They ran down my cheeks. I wiped them away with the back of my hand.

‘I just needed a little time to think of her,’ Joe said.

‘Of course you did,’ I said. ‘You haven’t really had chance. I understand.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, and to my surprise, I found it was the truth.

In daylight, the next morning, I saw the extent of the damage done to Joe by Vito Barsi.

The left side of his face was swollen; the sclera of that eye bloodshot, the pupil yellow in colour. There were cuts on his lip and chin and bruises on his ribs and hips. He looked like a boxer after a prize fight.

The physical pain didn’t bother Joe anywhere near as much as the worry that, despite his good intentions, he’d done nothing but cause trouble at the pizzeria. He worried about Valentina and Francesco. He was afraid he had made things worse, rather than better. I told him that he’d been right to call Vito out on his behaviour. I told him that people would talk about it now, and it would be harder for Vito to carry on. Surely one of the things about domestic abuse was that people pretended it wasn’t happening. Once it was out in the open, like any dirty secret, it became less acceptable.

This was the truth, but on a personal level, I was afraid that Vito’s pride would force him to take things further; that his dented ego would not feel whole again until he had defeated Joe. Humiliating a bully touches the deepest, sorest, root of their pain.

For the next few days, everything was calm. Work at the villa progressed well, and the amount of help we were receiving snowballed. Word of Joe’s challenge to Vito had spread. Strangers turned up at the villa, people with the specific skills we needed, and they treated Joe with consideration and respect. I saw him through their eyes, the outsider who’d had the guts to take on the town bully, and I was proud. I was proud to be with this man; I was proud to be associated with him.