‘Vito, could you spare Francesco for a while,’ I said. ‘I need some help moving furniture.’

‘Take him,’ Vito said cheerfully. ‘He’s no use to me.’

Joe took Francesco’s bag and hooked it over his own shoulder. ‘Right then, Vito,’ he said, ‘I’ll be your assistant. What first?’

I took Francesco into the villa, gave him some Coca-Cola and a snack, and then the two of us spent a pleasant hour clearing out the kitchen cupboards while Vito attended to the power, reconnecting us to the grid in a way that he told Joe was ‘not technically illegal’. After that, he went back to the cellar to work on the pump while Francesco and I went around the villa testing switches and plugs. Power had been restored to some of the downstairs rooms, but the upstairs remained unconnected. Francesco said the upstairs must be on a different circuit. ‘You probably need a qualified electrician,’ he said quietly, being careful not to criticise his stepfather.

‘We probably do,’ I agreed.

To Vito’s credit, he worked out what was the problem with the pump and soon enough we could turn on the taps in the kitchen and the bathroom. At first, filthy brown water spurted out, and the pipes rattled as if they were about to explode. After a while, the water became rusty red and eventually the red faded and the water ran clear.

The boiler proved the most problematic of the villa’s hardware. Vito told Joe that the mechanism was ‘screwed’ and needed replacing, but that a replacement would cost thousands of euros. He’d managed to get it going for the time being, but it wouldn’t last for long. ‘The quicker you get rid of this place, the better,’ he said. ‘The whole thing’s a liability.’

After Vito and Francesco left, Joe and I went back into the cellars. We searched every spidery, dark corner, we looked behind every wine rack and inside every old box. We found backdrops for the puppet theatre and scenery and puppets, tangled together in weird, orgiastic poses; I thought I detected the hand of Signora Romano’s father in some of them. We found old shoes and hats, rusting paint tins that were almost empty and a machine for putting corks into bottles. We found plant pots and lampshades and an old crib and a crate full of jam jars.

We didn’t find the Madonna del Mare.

Joe said the only places we hadn’t looked now were the outbuildings. They were hidden somewhere in the overgrowth of the gardens and we’d have to cut our way through to them and search there.

Later, when we were eating, being lavish in our use of plates and glasses because we now had the facility to wash up, I told Joe what Francesco and I had talked about.