A week after that, Joe took me back to recuperate at the villa. The police had finished their examination of the swimming pool and Joe had already begun to fill in the hole. We didn’t want to be reminded of what had happened there. We thought it better to cover the place over and we’d think of a way to remember Gina and to commemorate her life later.

I didn’t feel afraid in the villa. There was nothing to be afraid of any more. Matilde Romano, who only suffered flesh wounds when Irma’s gun went off, had been removed to a secure psychiatric hospital. There had been enough evidence in the house to be certain that she had been behind Gina’s murder. Gina’s clothes and belongings were still up in the attic along with Anna’s letters. The police also found correspondence between Matilde and Gabriele: letters in which Matilde expressed her hatred for Gina, and which encouraged Gabriele to think of her as a tease, a girl who had led him up the garden path, even though she never had any intention of being with him: the girl who preferred other girls to him: who had afforded him the ultimate humiliation. Matilde had sketched the route Gina walked each morning from the convent to the bus stop and added instructions to Gabriele on the best place to ambush her.

The Romano house was going to be demolished and the land around it would be assimilated into the wildlife sanctuary. Later, Matilde’s father’s inquest would reveal he’d died of natural causes several years earlier. Matilde had continued to care for the corpse, keeping it clean, taking it for walks and so on, as if it were one of her collection of puppets.

Valentina had left Vito and she, the baby and Francesco, were staying with her grandparents in Punto Secca. Irma had moved in with Vito and was helping him to run the pizzeria. She sent a letter to Francesco assuring him that she did not hold him responsible for Gabriele’s death and that he shouldn’t blame himself. She wrote that he was a good boy for looking after his mother and that she was going to try to knock some sense into Vito and that she wished Vito was more like Francesco.

Joe had taken responsibility for the Arnone animals, so now the little goat, Capretta, and the chickens were resident in the villa grounds along with the kittens. We lacked dogs, but Joe assured me it was only a matter of time until a stray in need of a home came along.