But we’re all going to die. We all know, I reminded myself, and then I stopped, because I found myself looking into young Anna’s eyes. There she was, sitting bareback on a horse; her hair cut in a short bob, her smile wide. She was wearing jodhpurs and a sleeveless shirt tied at the waist, riding boots. The horse was a handsome piebald with a long mane. The reins were loosely looped through the fingers of one of Anna’s hands. In the other was a cigarette. Anna did not look as if she was thinking about death. She looked like a young woman who was loving life; loving every moment of it. Her face was charismatic, happy, strong.

Standing slightly behind the horse was the same young man I’d seen in the photograph at the villa: the good-looking young Sicilian. He was looking down, the brim of a hat shadowing most of his face, so that only his smile and jaw were obvious, and Matilde was there too, half in, half out of the picture.

I was compelled to stare at Anna’s face for a while, several minutes, before I felt a gentle touch of a hand on my elbow and I turned to see a nun in full habit, with a gentle expression. She asked, in Italian, if I was all right and I realised she assumed I was grieving. I assured her that I was fine. She murmured some kind of religious assurance, which was kind, and we went our separate ways.

The woman inside the flower shop was about my age, with short black hair and a long fringe held off her face with a clip. We communicated successfully with the help of the translation app on her tablet. She introduced herself as Benedetta, the proprietor, and when she discovered who I was, she told me her mother and grandmother used to deliver flowers to the Villa della Madonna del Mare for parties and special occasions.

‘When the villa is restored, I’ll bring flowers for you!’ she said. I said that would be wonderful.

On her recommendation, I chose a tasteful arrangement of sweet peas, interspersed with rosebuds, ribbons and foliage to give to Matilde Romano. Benedetta put the arrangement into a cardboard box and wrapped the box in cellophane.

I returned to the car and drove back to the marshes, past the turning for the electricity plant with the weeds that grew thick at the base of its razor-wire fences, past the restaurant shack where Fiat One had been vandalised and on until I reached a thin, desolate house with a steeply pitched roof and crumbling paintwork standing on its own. The battered old taxi was parked outside.

I slowed the car. It may have been nothing more than a reluctance to see Signora Romano again, but something about that thin, old house filled me with dread.