I slowed as I approached, crept along the boundary at the side, mud drying on the skin of my ankles, the sun beating down on the back of my head. I went to the front door and knocked hard, with my knuckles. There was no answer, but when I tried the handle, the door opened. Probably Matilde never bothered to lock it, because nobody ever came out this way, and even if they did, who would want to rob a house as run-down as this one, surrounded by trash?

‘Signora Romano?’ I called. ‘Are you there?’

Nothing moved inside the house. I stepped out of the burning heat of the marshland into a dark hallway only slightly cooler. There were stairs in front of me and a door to the left that I pushed; it swung open into a shuttered room. Flies followed me and circled the room haphazardly, describing its spaces and crevices with their wild looping.

When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a living space furnished in the Sicilian style: a sofa, a dresser, a large television set, shelves containing plates and bowls, a vase of faded silk lilies. It would have been an unremarkable room if it weren’t for the pictures. The walls were covered with framed photographs; pictures of Anna from when she was a small child to a middle-aged woman. These were photographs I hadn’t seen before, dozens of them, in all sizes; Matilde Romano was in some of the pictures, standing beside Anna.

On the dresser, was a framed picture of Anna, Matilde and a third girl, each wearing party gowns. It would have been a lovely picture, if it weren’t for the fact that the face of the third girl – Gina – had been scratched out.

I went back into the hallway. A second door, downstairs, opened into a small, dark kitchen and a third into a bathroom that had been converted for an invalid; bars by the lavatory and the kind of shower that can accommodate a wheelchair. There was no sign of Matilde or her father.

I went to the bottom of the stairs, steep and narrow, the space further constricted by an old-fashioned stairlift.

‘Hello!’ I called. ‘Signora Romano, are you there?’

I heard nothing.

I don’t know what it was that compelled me to climb the stairs even though the prospect filled me with dread. It must have been some desire to know everything, to satisfy my curiosity, a desire that was stronger than my fear. Up I went, slowly, as quietly as I could, my hand shooing the flies from my face. Bites were itching and swelling on my exposed skin.