The woman gestured with the gun towards the door, breathing heavily, licking her dry old lips, saliva bubbling in the corners of her mouth. She asked a question I did not understand and then shouted: ‘C'è qualcun altro qui? Qualcun altro? Eh? Eh?’ The gun barrel jabbed at me like a pointed finger and then jabbed towards the open door, signalling me to move.

I turned to the door, took a step, my foot slipped and my legs splayed. I almost fell. Through the gap in the door, I saw Joe sitting up in his sleeping bag, rubbing the lenses of his reading glasses on the hem of his T-shirt. He frowned when he saw me. I made a face at him, Help! I mouthed.

‘What?’

‘Help!’ I indicated the old woman behind me with my eyes, and Joe spotted her.

He scrambled out of the sleeping bag and set off across the lawn, scampering on all fours like an animal. He was going to circle round behind us. I turned back to the woman who was right beside me now, looking over my shoulder. She hadn’t seen Joe, but I could see his footsteps, dark where he’d crushed the long grass, and the two sleeping bags. I could smell her breath, stale, foul with garlic and old coffee, see the whiskers growing on her chin. She pushed me aside and at last the gun wasn’t pointing at me. In one heartbeat, I was as scared as I’d ever been, in the next my fear flipped into fury. How dare she come in to our villa and threaten us with a shotgun? How dare she?

I lunged forward, throwing my weight at the woman and she, surprised, lost her balance and the two of us ended up on the ground. She was shockingly strong for her age and violent. We fought, she grabbing viciously at my flesh, me trying to push her head back and then Joe was there and he had hold of her, dragging her off me.

‘Get the gun,’ he cried, and I grabbed it and pointed it at the old woman while he pulled her to her feet, holding her arms behind her back so that she could not escape, although she twisted and raged, trying to bite him.

‘Shut up!’ I screamed. ‘Shut up, you crazy bastard bitch!’

The woman screamed at me and I screamed right back at her. I stepped back, bumping the handle of the gun against the wall of the house and it went off, bang! The gun jumped in my hand and I heard a series of pings as the shot hit something and then more subdued pings as it bounced off something else.

‘Jesus!’ Joe cried. ‘What did you do that for?’

‘I didn’t mean to… Did it hit anyone?’

The woman was looking all around her, trying to see where the shot had gone.