The villa was quiet and still around me, as if it was holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen next. The morning was oppressively hot. I thought of the little graveyard in the shade of the oleaster tree. The thought of abandoning the graves troubled me. I reassured myself that they’d be looked after. Matilde Romano must know about the graveyard if she and Anna had been so close. She could be entrusted with its care.

But then Joe’s words haunted me. He was right; once the villa was sold, we would have no say in what happened to it. The prospect of the graves being bulldozed was unbearable.

I tried to put my worries from my mind. I dawdled around the villa, boxing up books and old toys and fighting off a headache. Mid-morning, I came to the kitchen for a drink of water and saw that Joe had left his shirt, crumpled and sweat-stained, on the table. Irritated by his untidiness, I pushed it to one side and something fell to the floor: his wallet. I picked it up and it opened in my hands like a book. I could not help but see the photograph, an old-fashioned colour print tucked inside one of the pockets. It was a picture of a young girl, fourteen or fifteen, a smiling young girl with a neat little body, skin tanned a deep brown, long, dark hair, tousled and wet, standing barefoot on the beach with the sea, and the floating dock behind her. The girl was wearing a bright red, halter-neck bikini with a frill around the waist and a matching bracelet of plastic flowers around her wrist. Her head was tipped back and she was laughing, her teeth straight and white. Beside her was a young man, Joe, about the same age as the girl but seemingly younger, his legs and hips skinny, hair beginning to grow on his navel. He was looking at her, grinning broadly; his hair was wet too. Their wet skin shone in the sunlight.

I took the picture out of the wallet and turned it over. Someone had written on the back, it was adult handwriting, hard to read and in Italian. I couldn’t make it out, but I recognised the signature at the bottom, Valentina, and the crudely drawn heart.

She must have given it to Joe when he dropped by to see her, a reminder of their teenage romance, a keepsake that she’d held onto for all these years, through her moves to New York and then back to Sicily. Did a flame still burn in her heart for Joe? Did she wish she’d stayed with my husband instead of going off to marry her two Italians?

It took all of my willpower not to crumple the photograph in my hand.