My eyes skimmed the posters. All the faces, dozens of them, united in death. Some of the faces were of young men who, according to their dates, had died in the war, decades earlier. There was a picture of a swaddled baby: Cancio, Egidia; nato morto, and next to it a small boy, about the same age as Daniel, Cancio, Matteo. Oh God, two children lost from the same family!

Beside me, Joe caught his breath. ‘Look!’

To one side of the wall, amongst the many images, was a poster bearing the words: DeLuca, Anna, 66 years old. Beloved friend. Death will not keep us apart. Beneath was a photocopied picture of three young women standing in front of the Villa della Madonna del Mare, not as it was now, but as it once must have been, well kept, its gardens tended. The front door was ajar; the shutters on the downstairs windows opened wide. A young version of Anna was in the centre of the group; dark hair cut in a short bob. She was wearing pedal pushers and a gingham top with capped sleeves. To one side of her, a small girl with frizzy hair was grinning at the camera; to the other, a taller, more solidly built young woman stood slightly back. The face of the third girl had been erased; whoever had done it had scratched at the paper so viciously it was torn.

‘Who could have put that up?’ I asked Joe.

‘I guess Anna still has friends here.’

‘But the girl’s face…’

‘I know. It’s weird.’

I picked at the edge of the paper, pulled at it. A small strip tore away in my hand.

‘Leave it,’ Joe said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

I bought what I needed from the pharmacy and we returned to the car via the harbour. I felt uneasy, unsettled by the defaced picture on the memorial wall. Someone had cared about Joe’s mother enough to put up a poster in her memory. And someone had cared enough to vandalise it. Someone loved and someone hated; someone wanted to remember and someone wanted to forget the past; to obliterate it.

As we walked through the town, my discomfort increased to the point where I was cold, despite the warmth of the day. It wasn’t only the sinister violation of the face in the photograph, I had the exact same sensation I’d experienced at the villa the previous evening: that we were being watched.

I looked behind me, expecting to see someone dart into a doorway, but nobody was there. I looked up, to the windows of the houses that lined the narrow streets, but all I could see were the reflections of the houses opposite in the glass.