Distantly, the sea slapped against the rock; the smell was of salt and seaweed and sea. Joe seemed a very long way away from me. Plastic was caught on the rocks, close by me. I reached down and picked it up. It was an old salt bag. The contents were long gone, but the bag remained there and beneath it was a brilliant white goat’s skull with two brown horns. The salt bag had decayed over the years, the plastic so brittle it flaked in my fingers. It had an unpleasant texture; like something long dead. I let it fall and the torch beam picked up something else, an object on the cave floor a little distance away.

Treading carefully, I stepped over the sharp rock and shone the torch down on the object. It was a puppet, a similar size to the one Matilde Romano had given me, lying face down on the rock. Its handle was missing, but the strings were tangled around the puppet’s torso as if it were caught in a net. It was wearing a tiny suit of armour, like a knight. I prodded it with the toe of my sandal, turned it over and gave a gasp of shock.

Beneath the raised visor of its helmet, the puppet had no face. Its features had been chiselled away.

22

‘It’s nothing,’ Joe said when I showed him the puppet. ‘Don’t let it bother you.’

‘Doesn’t it bother you that someone put this disgusting thing here?’

‘We don’t know it was put there deliberately. It might have been washed up by the tide.’

‘Oh, come on, Joe!’

‘Whatever, it’s been there for years. It’s no concern of ours.’

‘Is removing the faces from things a Sicilian tradition?’

‘No, but there’s probably some rational explanation.’

‘It’s like a kind of black magic.’

‘Edie, that’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it? You were the one who brought up voodoo.’

‘I was joking.’

We were talking in hushed whispers as we retraced our footsteps up the dark rock steps, through the cellars, up the stairwell and back into the daylight. As we blinked and shaded our eyes, Vito came around the side of the villa carrying a large metal toolbox. Francesco trailed in his wake, a canvas bag slung over his shoulder so heavy that it pulled his whole body down. Vito was telling Francesco to hurry, jabbing him with bullying words, but when he saw us, his expression changed and he grinned broadly. He took the gum out of his mouth and pressed it into a crack in the old wall. I saw him do it and Francesco’s eyes followed his stepfather and then the boy looked at me. We exchanged a quiet glance and in that moment I felt a connection with Francesco. It was the beginning of something; a relationship, a friendship. I didn’t know what exactly, but it was real.