‘It wasn’t a miracle,’ I said. ‘Daniel showed me where to go.’

‘Daniel?’

‘Yes. And Anna. She was with him.’

I didn’t say any more because I could see that what I’d already said was too much for Joe. But I knew what had happened and I knew they were together, Daniel and Anna. I knew she was looking after him. I knew he was safe.

Later, Joe told me that Matilde was behind all the awful things that had happened at the villa. She’d poisoned the cat, she’d cut the chain that secured the gate and nailed the dead crow to our door, she’d set fire to the villa and she had tampered with the steering on the Alfa Romeo. She’d known exactly what to do because she’d been taught, by her father, all about cars and how they worked.

‘She was trying to kill us,’ Joe told me, holding my hand, turning it over in his. ‘She set it so that the mechanism would fail when the wheel was turned sharply; on a bend or trying to avoid something – or someone – in the road.’

‘We could have driven over the cliff.’

‘We could have.’

I let the implications of this sink in for a moment, then I asked: ‘So the steering failed as Francesco tried to avoid hitting Gabriele?’

‘Yes.’

‘So the accident wasn’t his fault?’

‘No. And Irma knew. She has proof.’

‘How did she know?’

‘She knows everything. She watches the villa. She takes photographs. She saw Matilde slashing the Fiat’s tyres. She saw her get into the Alfa Romeo and do something to the steering column. When the police told her what had happened to Gabriele, she knew it was Matilde’s fault.’

‘So she went straight over to Matilde’s house with her gun.’

‘Like Clint bloody Eastwood,’ said Joe.

‘Like the cavalry.’

On the third day that I was in hospital, Valentina came to visit. She came to the side of the bed and lay a small bundle beside me. The face of a newborn baby gazed out from its swaddling.

‘Oh, Valentina, she’s beautiful.’

‘Her name is Mia,’ said Valentina. ‘I wanted you to be the first to meet her. Well, almost the first. Francesco’s seen her.’

‘How is Francesco?’

‘He’s doing okay. He knows the accident wasn’t his fault.’ She sighed and shook her head. ‘It’s still a terrible thing to have to live with, but he’ll be all right. I’ll make sure of it.’ She looked down at the baby, gazing back up at her. ‘We’ll make sure of it, won’t we, Mia?’