We drove on. The longer I sat beside Joe in the car, the less I wanted to be there. The prospect of spending days, weeks even maybe, going through his family’s possessions – his grandmother’s fusty old lady things, congealed pots of face cream and personal items belonging to her and to Anna, things I would not want to see or touch, filled me with dismay. I didn’t know if I would be able to bear it.

After a while, a thought occurred to me.

‘Rather than us having to do it, couldn’t we pay someone to go in to the villa and sort out the contents?’ I asked.

‘Pay someone?’ Joe sounded as if the suggestion had appalled him.

‘There are people who’ll do that kind of thing, look at what’s valuable and what’s not and…’

‘A stranger? You want us to employ a stranger to go through my family’s things?’

Oh for goodness sake, I thought, you’re happy enough to sell the villa, why make a song and dance about what’s inside? Although I was bristling, I continued in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice.

‘Not some random stranger, but a professional. Someone without any emotional connection who could be more objective.’

Joe frowned. ‘You sound as if you think an emotional connection is a bad thing.’

‘I didn’t say that, and you know that’s not what I meant. I’m only trying to be practical. It would save you having to feel bad about throwing things away. It would be less hassle all round.’

‘I promised Anna we’d deal with our inheritance together.’

Anna scheming again! She’d thought of every little way to manipulate the two of us.

‘You might have promised her, but I didn’t and it’s not like it matters to her now. Why put yourself – and me, through all that?’

Joe’s hands were gripping the steering wheel and I knew from his expression that I’d said too much. I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t help myself.

‘House clearance experts would sort it out in no time and we wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of hiring a skip or whatever.’

Joe remained silent while we waited at a roundabout, but as we joined the road that would take us towards the coast, he said: ‘You’ve changed, Edie. You used to be kind.’

That was hurtful but I didn’t bite back at him. I didn’t want our sniping to develop into a full blown fight.

‘I’m being practical, that’s all,’ I said quietly.

‘Whatever,’ he said.