It was late afternoon by the time we reached the seaside town of Punta Secca, and the hottest day of the summer so far. The surface of the roads was beginning to melt and a heat shimmer blurred the greys and buffs of the buildings. Red and purple flowers cascaded over flaking walls; and the verges were littered with little white dog turds, cigarette ends and discarded sweet wrappers. The town was quiet; the oppressive heat was keeping people away. Joe and I were almost alone as we walked along the seafront, the sea too bright for our eyes in the sun’s glare, towards the famous lighthouse and Montalbano’s house.

We ate at a small café overlooking the sea. I ordered pasta with tomato sauce, and Joe asked for the house speciality. The waiter returned with a plate of fried sardines, their eyes popped and the bones of their fins shining slender as hairs through an oily batter. He put the plate in the centre of the table with a flourish, along with chunks of bread and a jar of mayonnaise.

‘They came out of the harbour this afternoon,’ he said. ‘You won’t get anything fresher anywhere.’

Those fish would have been shoaling in the shallows a few hours earlier, flashing through patches of sunlight in the water, darting amongst the weed. Now, they were little zombified corpses. They repulsed me. I drank some water. Joe ate enthusiastically.

I pulled my legs out of the sun and, under the table, a sparrow, startled by the movement, fluttered into the air and then settled again.

‘Is something wrong?’ Joe asked, nodding at my plate.

‘I’m just not very hungry.’

‘If you’re not going to eat it, can I have it?’

‘Help yourself.’

He took the plate from me, and forked the pasta into his mouth.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Edie?’

‘I went to see Signora Romano,’ I said, ‘to apologise. She said we should give up now or lose everything.’

Joe looked at me but continued eating.

I moved grains of salt around the tabletop with the tip of my forefinger.

‘She’s nuts,’ Joe said after a while.

‘I know. But things have been going wrong.’

‘Random things.’

‘The crow wasn’t random.’

‘I thought we weren’t going to let that get to us.’

He broke a piece of bread and wiped the edge of my plate.

‘Edie, Signora Romano’s trying to spook you. She’s upset about us not selling the place to her. She wanted to live in the villa and swan around pretending she was a DeLuca and now she can’t and she’s cross with us.’

‘She says it’s just a question of time before we leave.’

‘She’s mad, Edie; mad as a box of frogs. Forget her.’