I stood, hardly daring to breathe and, thirty feet from me, the old man stood, and I thought: This is ridiculous, are we going to stand here in the dark until dawn?

I called out to him. ‘Scusi, Signor!’

He didn’t hear me.

I began to walk towards him, talking all the time so that he shouldn’t be surprised by my approach. As I drew closer, I saw that his chest and shoulders were bare. I could see bushy white hair on his naked skin, the bullish shape of his neck now slack with wrinkles. His lips were moving as if he was praying. The goat looked up at my approach, her little jaw rotating.

‘Signor Arnone,’ I said quietly, when I was almost, but not quite, close enough to touch the old man. ‘I need to take you home. A casa. To Irma. Irma will be worried about you.’

He looked up then. ‘Irma?’ he asked.

‘Si, Irma.’ Now I was close enough to see the confusion in his eyes.

He pointed down into the pool and mumbled something. I couldn’t understand a single word.

I smiled with as much confidence as I could muster and nodded back towards the villa’s gates. ‘Andiamo,’ I said, ‘let’s go.’

‘No, no!’ he said, and pointed down again.

‘There’s nothing there,’ I said. ‘It’s just a clapped-out old pool. Come on, let’s get back up the hill to Irma.’

We walked slowly around the side of the villa, Gabriele leading the goat and following me. He was meek as a lamb. Occasionally, he broke wind unashamedly and I had to clasp my hand to my mouth to stop myself laughing at the surrealism of the situation in which I found myself; the goat, me and the farting Mafioso. Moonlight rimmed the tracks gouged into the ground by the fire engine.

‘Careful,’ I said to Gabriele and he heeded my words, stepped carefully over the disturbed ground.

The moon was bright enough for us to see where we were treading, but I kept my phone clasped in my hand and was relieved when we were close enough to the road for it to light up with a signal. If I needed help now, I could call for it.

We climbed the track up to the Arnones’ cottage and I saw Gabriele and the goat through the gate into its garden. I was tempted to leave them there, but my school-teacher’s sense of responsibility obliged me to make sure they were safe. Gabriele sat down in his usual spot on the stool as if it were mid-morning, not the middle of the night.

I went to the cottage door, which was ajar, and knocked. A lamp was still burning inside.

‘Signora Arnone!’ I called. ‘Hello!’

She appeared wearing a long nightdress that buttoned at the throat, her hair tucked beneath a nightcap. When she saw me, first shock and then fear flooded her face.