I knew it was a pointless exercise, I’d done it a million times before, but still I found myself tumbling down a rabbit hole of ‘if only’s’. If only we hadn’t chosen that particular day to go into town; if only we hadn’t mentioned our plans to Anna; if only we’d told her we wanted to take Daniel with us; if only we’d realised that she needed to keep drinking in the same way most people need to keep drawing breath. No, that last one was wrong; if only I’d realised. Joe had his suspicions. I knew he did. I’d recognised it in those moments when we first found out Daniel was missing. I saw fear run across Joe’s face like the shadow of a cloud. I’d analysed every moment of that day a million times and I knew that, in that instant, Joe had been thinking: Oh dear God, don’t let this be anything to do with Anna’s drinking, I knew it and when I challenged him about it, he admitted it. He admitted that he suspected Anna might be drinking all day, every day, that she couldn’t go longer than an hour or two without a drink, but he’d convinced himself she wouldn’t do it while she was looking after Daniel.

Why didn’t he talk to me about it? Why didn’t he mention his fears to me? If he had, would I have left Daniel with Anna for a single minute? No! No, I wouldn’t have and Daniel wouldn’t have gone missing and Joe and I would still be together and the three of us might well all be here on holiday, now, like a normal family; like normal, happy people.

Regret took hold of me and squeezed. I felt it in my heart, in my soul, in my bones.

The dock rocked beneath me, disturbed by the wake from a speedboat out in the bay. I sat down, leaned back on the palms of my hands, felt the movement of the water below. I looked over to the villa. It was lovely in the sunshine, the points of the cypress trees rising above the roof, the flowers tumbling over the wall, turquoise sea surrounding the headland, setting it off beautifully.

Our villa.

The villa we were about to sell. The villa that had been in the DeLuca family for more than two hundred years; the family whose lost babies were buried in its gardens.

What then? I wondered. What would become of us after the sale?