I twisted the ribbon of the shirt around my hand. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I had changed but if I had it was because of Anna and what she’d done to me. Grief had made me bitter and anger had made me harder, but that wasn’t my fault, was it? I hadn’t asked for Daniel to be taken from me. If I was no longer a kind person, then Anna was to blame. She had ruined everything.

We continued in silence. Joe was in a bad mood now, but he hadn’t stopped to think how difficult this was for me. I was dreading seeing the villa for the first time, dreading it becoming real to me.

I stared out of the window, every atom aching with tension.

8

Some of Sicily was beautiful, but some of it wasn’t. We passed scruffy smallholdings, little farms, glossy horses standing in the shade of trees in fields surrounded by drystone walls, their tails twitching away the flies. We went through ugly industrial and retail estates. We saw car parks and pylons and yellow McDonald’s signs and overflowing, communal rubbish bins; a giant quarry. I made a mental note of the bad and refused to allow myself to be enchanted by the good. It made me uncomfortable thinking of Anna thinking of me; she imagining how I’d feel when I came here for the first time. I made up my mind not to appreciate any of it.

After we’d driven in silence for more than an hour, we crested the ridge of a wooded hill and the sea came into view below us, taking me by surprise; a sparkling, jewel green sea that faded into a turquoise haze at the horizon.

‘Wow,’ I breathed, forgetting to be surly.

‘The light,’ Joe said quietly. ‘I’d forgotten the light.’

He slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road. We both looked over the vista, taking the time to savour it.

‘When was the last time you were here?’ I asked Joe.

‘Twenty years, maybe.’

‘That’s a long time.’

‘Yeah.’

‘The villa’s down there,’ he said, indicating a small headland to one side of the bay. On the other was a larger headland, with a road running along its spine and a little town at the end. I could just make out a harbour, masts bobbing distantly, and a lighthouse that looked as if it belonged on a postcard. ‘We could drive down and have a quick look at what we’ve inherited before it gets dark.’

‘Okay, but Joe, I haven’t booked any accommodation for tonight. Have you?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Will we be able to find somewhere?’

‘There’s a hotel in Porta Sarina.’ Joe nodded towards the town.

‘They’ll definitely have room, will they?’

‘Yep,’ he replied.

‘Do you think we should call them now?’

‘It’ll be fine.’