‘It’s okay,’ Joe said, ‘it’s okay, we’re all okay, let’s calm down a bit.’

He let go of the woman’s wrists and she, shocked by the gunshot, calmed down. She rubbed at her wrists, scowling ferociously. Her hair was wild, sticking up in all directions; there were scratches on her face and arms.

‘Chi sei?’ he asked. Who are you?

‘It’s her!’ I cried; now I was marginally less panicked, my brain was functioning again. ‘The woman from up the hill. The Mafioso’s wife!’

At the word ‘Mafioso’, the old woman set to her screeching again, spitting as she spoke and directing most of her invective towards me. Joe let her finish, then spoke to her in Italian, and she replied to him; she was furious, his tone was conciliatory.

‘Shall I call the police?’ I asked, pacing warily, keeping my distance, feeling the weight of the gun in my hands. ‘I’ll call the police!’ I said. ‘Polizia!’ I said to the woman. ‘Prisone for you!’ I didn’t have a phone signal here, but I would damn well run up that hill and all the way back to Porta Sarina if I needed to.

‘No,’ Joe said. ‘This was a misunderstanding.’

‘A misunderstanding?’ I cried. ‘She breaks into our house, with a gun, she threatens us and you call it a misunderstanding?’

‘She thought we were the intruders.’

‘So why didn’t she call the police instead of barging in here like Clint bloody Eastwood?’

‘The old people round here don’t trust the police. Signora Arnone’s been keeping an eye on the villa for years. She looks out for trespassers, chases away teenagers…’

‘Chases them away? Or shoots them and throws their bodies into the sea?’

Joe gave me a look that signified hysteria wasn’t helping the situation.

The woman, who was a little calmer now, asked him a question.

He replied: ‘Anna DeLuca era mia madre.’

‘Ahh! Il figlio d’Anna! Il ragazzo! Bello! Multo bello!’

The old woman’s expression changed instantly into one of grandmotherly affection and she and Joe fell again into conversation, the old woman looking as if she’d like to pinch his cheeks.

I paced beside them, working the stress out of my body. From time to time, Joe translated a snippet of information to me in English. The old woman had seen us go by in the Fiat the previous afternoon and, when the car didn’t come back up the hill, had presumed we were up to no good and had come down at first light to chase us away from the villa, for which she felt some responsibility because the DeLuca family had always been so kind to her and her husband and because of the long-standing links between the two families.