Instead, while I waited for him to return, I kept myself busy, moving the chairs back to the table and dusting the seats. If I prepared the table for our evening meal, then it would be difficult for Joe to walk away.

In the kitchen, I found glass jars containing candles, each jar covered by a dusty saucer that had kept the candle clean beneath. We’d bought matches, and although the candles had been left for so long, they lit easily. I set the jars on the table outside and some along the ledge of the window in the kitchen, where they flickered cheerfully.

Next, I swept the tabletop, and then the area around the table. In the candlelight, the courtyard took on a cosy atmosphere. The first stars began to twinkle in the night sky.

Joe returned, his T-shirt clinging to his damp shoulders. Beyond the black silhouettes of trees, silver moonlight was caught in the small waves rolling in from the bay and breaking against the rocks. The cicadas sang their song. Joe did not comment on the preparations I’d made. Perhaps he was thinking about the evening before, when I’d rushed off to my hotel room rather than eat with him.

I tried not to think about Anna’s dead siblings watching from the shadows as I laid out the food, bottles of water. I unwrapped the wax paper from the cheese, opened a jar of olives, sliced tomatoes. Joe opened two bottles of beer and passed one to me. We sat at the table in the candlelight. I pulled the zip on my jumper up to my chin. Joe was thoughtful, staring into the mouth of his bottle. It was peaceful and I didn’t want to spoil the atmosphere, so I tried to think of something to say that would be friendly, without compromising my anger; something that wouldn’t summon the spirit of Anna to the table.

‘Did you used to eat out here,’ I asked Joe, ‘when you came, before, on holiday?’

‘All the time.’ He looked around as if remembering the people who used to occupy the empty chairs. ‘My grandmother used to love entertaining. There’d be lanterns hung in the trees, lights everywhere.’ He trailed off and fell silent again. ‘There was a housekeeper then, did I tell you? And a caretaker, a married couple. They lived together in a cottage behind the garage. They had a little dog. They were very good to me and Cece.’

‘Was Cece upset that Anna left this place to you and me?’

‘She got the London house. She thinks she came off best.’

Oh, Anna. More evidence of your scheming; you giving the uncomplicated London house to your uncomplicated daughter and the abandoned, difficult Sicilian villa to the abandoned son and his difficult ex-wife.

‘Did your father ever come here?’ I asked to change the subject.

‘No,’ Joe replied.

‘Never?’