‘The frame’s about so big,’ Joe described a rectangle approximately two feet square, the space of the brighter patch on the wall. ‘The picture inside is quite small. The Madonna’s praying but looking out of the image so she catches your eye. In the background are ships and the sea.’

He dusted his hands and wiped his palms on the sides of his shorts.

‘We have to find it,’ he said. ‘I promised Anna.’

Anna, Anna, Anna. Always Anna.

We went upstairs, keeping close, me following Joe, our feet leaving faint prints in the dust. It was strange to think we were the first people to disturb this air, to breathe it, for years. If I narrowed my eyes, I could almost see other people, those who had been here before, passing us on the stairs, trotting down: adults with towels bundled under their arms, children in shorts and T-shirts running to play outside; Anna, trailed by her imaginary siblings; Daniel.

It made sense that Daniel should be here. He was a DeLuca. DeLuca blood ran through his veins. This villa should have been his destiny. It should have been where he came for his summer holidays, as his father had. He would have loved this place and it didn’t seem such a large leap of faith to believe that he was here, now, somehow, with all the other lost DeLucas.

Joe looked over his shoulder. ‘You okay, Edie?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m great.’

At the top of the stairs was a landing with the three arched windows we’d seen from the outside; seven feet tall at their highest point, rims of light at their edges. Joe opened the catch of the middle one and the two halves of the window swung open towards him. He pushed open the wooden shutters behind. They clattered back and light flooded onto the landing.

Joe stepped out onto the balcony and I followed. The ghosts retreated into the shadows. The sun sent its warmth and light into the Villa della Madonna del Mare, lighting the pale pink plaster on the walls, illuminating the fancy coving, the pictures and the fittings, the cobwebs, the floating motes of dust.

Joe and I rested our hands on the ornate balcony railings and looked through the trees out across the sea beyond and the perfect, blue sky. Gulls wheeled above the water.