We were back at the villa. I pulled towards the open door, smoke billowing out; someone tried to hold me back, but I peeled their hands from my arms and plunged into the hallway. ‘Joe!’ I thought I saw him, a dense, dark figure in a tangle of swirling shadows.

I pulled the neck of my shirt over my mouth and nose and made my way to the living room; flames were licking across the floor, flickering on the edges of the rug; smoke danced around the chandelier and investigated the nooks and crannies of the ceiling coving. I went forward, stamping on the rug, furious with the fire. I grabbed Anna’s diary from the table, and the photographs I’d left with it, and staggered forwards to the French windows. I lifted the catch, and the window swung back so suddenly that I fell out onto the terrace beyond. The smoke rushed after me, tumbling gleefully into the sky.

I crawled onto the lawn and lay there, my body heaving to draw oxygen. After a moment or two, I had the strength to drag myself forwards, and as I raised myself onto my elbows, I saw a couple ahead of me, standing beside the hole where the old swimming pool used to be. They were looking towards the burning villa and their faces were illuminated by the fire. I saw them clear as daylight, but they did not see me, down in the grass. It was Gabriele and Irma Arnone. His arm was threaded through hers and confusion was written on his old face. She wasn’t looking at her husband. She was holding something up to her face; a camera. She was taking pictures of the fire.

Joe found me a short while later. He was sooty, smuts on his skin and ash caught in his hair. I shouted at him for going into the villa: he said he’d been in and out, closing doors, trying to contain the flames. He was shocked, but there was exhilaration in his voice, in his words. Joe liked action. He liked being able to do something to solve a problem. He told me to keep back, and he, meanwhile, joined the chain of volunteers, most still in their beach clothes, filling buckets from the pump and passing them into the villa. I watched them working in silhouette, this line of determined people in their swimsuits and kimonos working like ants. I would never forget that scene; the strangers who came to help us, nor how hard they laboured to save the villa.