‘I hope you and your father haven’t been too inconvenienced on account of Joe and me,’ I said, ‘and if there’s anything you need… anything I can do to help…’ I was anxious for reassurance that there was no bad blood between us.

‘We’ve waited for the villa this long. We can wait a little longer,’ she replied curtly.

‘There’s no point waiting, Signora, the villa’s not for sale,’ I said. ‘We meant what we said. We’re not going to sell it.’

‘But you will,’ she said, ‘because if you don’t, you’ll lose everything.’

It was a mean thing to say, and uncalled for when I’d been trying to make amends.

I kept my voice calm. ‘Joe and I know what we’re doing. We know it won’t be easy, but we’re going to make it work.’

She snorted. ‘You’ll regret staying. You’ll see. That villa will bring you nothing but bad luck.’

She shook her head and then she turned and went back into the house, pulling the door sharply shut behind her.

49

I drove back to the villa feeling cross and miserable. It had been foolish to hope that Signora Romano would accept the gift graciously, but I hadn’t expected her to be so unkind. I turned her words over in my mind, wondering what she’d meant exactly, and eventually convinced myself that they had only been words; that they meant nothing, that she was a lonely woman with too much time on her hands, a woman who had come close to realising her dream and now was bitter because it had been taken from her.

I found Joe outside the villa tinkering with the Alfa Romeo. He told me he and Francesco had been taking turns to drive it up the track.

‘You let Francesco drive?’

‘I’m teaching him. It goes like a dream. Would you like to go for a spin?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’d like that a lot.’

We drove a route we hadn’t taken before, sitting low in the car, held secure in its big sports seats. The wind was in my hair, the sun on my skin. The car clung to the road, the slipstream grabbed at all the secrets and worries that had been playing on my mind and snatched them from me. We went fast enough to outrun them – almost. I’d never ridden in a car like it. I’d never understood that driving could be a joyous thing to do.