I knew there was someone in Sicily for Joe. I remembered how, when he came back to London at the beginning of September each year, tanned and taller after the summer holiday spent with his mother’s family, he’d be different for a while, less friendly towards me. It always took a few weeks for our friendship to get back on course. Now I knew why.

‘I only found out she’d been pretending ages after,’ Joe continued. ‘I boasted to everyone that I’d saved this girl’s life, but then she told Anna she had a crush on me and couldn’t think of another way to get me to kiss her.’

‘Oh. Right.’

Joe looked at me. ‘What?’

‘If she liked you, why didn’t she just tell you that she did? Why go to all that trouble?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe she was shy.’

‘She doesn’t seem shy.’

‘Why are you making such a big deal of it?’ Joe asked.

‘I’m not. It’s a sweet story.’

I didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but that was the way it sounded. We both heard the scorn in my voice.

Joe turned from me, disappointed. I didn’t bother trying to apologise. I couldn’t wait until all of this was over and we could go our separate ways and we’d never have to see one another again. Dear God, I hoped that moment would soon be here.

12

I needed some sun protection lotion and Joe said there was a pharmacy in town and that it would be quicker to leave the car and walk.

I followed him along the narrow pavements. He looked more like himself this morning. He was wearing a scruffy old T-shirt and a pair of shorts that had seen better days, together with a pair of working boots and mismatched socks. I’d put on an old cotton maxi-dress, trainers, a floppy straw hat and a pair of sunglasses.

Porta Sarina was not a picture postcard town. The buildings were shabby, pockmarked stone, cat shit in the gunnels and weeds growing from the guttering. Washing was strung between the upper windows of the houses across the alleyways: knock-off designer tracksuits, football shirts and shorts; lines of bright-pink baby vests. Recycling bins overflowed at street corners and there was a pervasive smell of fish.

As we approached the main piazza, we came to a wall covered in posters. They were mostly handmade, black and white. Printed on them were photographs, family snapshots or professional portraits, and beside the images were dates and lines of writing.

‘What is this?’ I asked Joe.

‘It’s the memorial wall.’

‘These are dead people?’

‘Yeah. People put up posters on birthdays and anniversaries.’

‘Ugh.’

‘“Ugh” what?’

‘It’s macabre.’

‘Or you could look at it as being a loving tradition, a way of keeping people’s memories alive.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, without conviction.