There’d be a little money for Joe and me to share. Not much, that was clear, but perhaps enough for me to put down a deposit on a small place of my own. I could move out of Fitz’s spare room and into… what? Property in Bristol was expensive. I might be lucky and find somewhere tiny and cheap, probably not in the desirable area of Southville where Fitz lived, but somewhere. And then what? Without Fitz and the animals, how would I fill my life? And, in any case, did I really want to live in a small flat on my own, just because I could?

No.

Okay. So, I wouldn’t use my share of the money to buy a property. What else could I do with it? I didn’t want to travel. I couldn’t ski, I wasn’t interested in chasing the sun for the sake of it. I didn’t want a car or a yacht, or fancy clothes or jewellery. There was nothing in the world that I wanted except what I had already lost; my son, my family, my former happiness – all the things that Anna had taken from me.

The bitter truth was that the money she’d bequeathed me via the villa, blood money, would not enhance my life. I didn’t want it.

I supposed I could refuse to accept my share of the cash, insist that Joe took it all, or I could put it aside for Cece’s children, not that they’d need it. The Sicilian villa might not be worth much but the London house Anna had left to Cece and her family would give them more than enough to see them through.

I could give the money to Fitz, only Fitz wouldn’t take it.

I could give it to charity.

I looked across the sea at the villa. Somewhere in the gardens, amongst those riotous plants, the little black and white cat would be hunting; the sun would be warming the stones over the three tiny graves, the birds would be splashing in the birdbath, the light would be falling on the courtyard behind the kitchen. I thought of the afternoon light inside the villa, the dry smell of warm wood, the colours of the garden reflected in the mirrors that hung on the walls, the perfume of the flowers, always strongest at this time of day, drifting through the open windows and the reassuring, gentle sound of the sea. Something inside me shifted; a truth revealed itself to me. I felt more at home in the Villa della Madonna del Mare than I’d felt anywhere else in the past ten years. It was because I felt closer to Daniel there; because it was so easy to summon my son to me when I was inside the villa’s walls, or in the garden close to the graves. I couldn’t rationalise or explain this, but it was true.