I gazed at myself. My chin was shaped like my grandmother’s. The skin on my face was beginning to soften, like hers. My grandmother had no options in life. She’d been obliged to care for her family. There was never enough money and she ran out of time. My mother’s life had been confined by the boundaries of ill health. I’d always had more freedom than either of them. And here I was, with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step out of the rut. If my grandmother or mother had been here now, they’d have told me to pull my socks up. The poor cat, left dead outside our gate, wasn’t a reason to run away, it was a reason to stay and fight.

Yes, I was afraid that someone was watching us, someone who didn’t want us here, but I would be damned if I let them know I was afraid. And I could see why Joe had said what he’d said but things could change. We weren’t exactly close but we’d been managing to work together in and around the villa. We’d proved we could still be a good team. We complemented one another in our skills and approach to life. And each of us was the only strong link the other had to Daniel. We had made Daniel between us. We couldn’t walk away from that. We mustn’t.

‘Are you going to give up so easily?’ I asked my reflection. ‘Are you?’

30

I went back downstairs, padding barefoot. The chandelier twinkled in the hallway. I followed a slight draught into the kitchen. Joe was standing by the back door, gazing out into the darkness, a bottle of beer in his hand. He looked scruffy and tired.

‘Joe,’ I said, ‘can we talk about the villa?’

He took a drink from the mouth of the beer bottle.

‘I was wrong,’ I said, ‘to want us to rush into selling. I just wanted this whole thing over and done with. I hadn’t given it any thought and you… well, you didn’t really have a choice did you, because I couldn’t sell unless you did. You don’t really want to give the villa up, Joe, do you?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I mean, if there was an alternative…’

Joe sighed. ‘There is no alternative.’

‘There could be! If we work together!’

He turned slowly. ‘If we work together? Seriously? You and me?’

‘Why not? We were a good team before.’

‘A good team? Are you crazy? We were a disaster.’ His eyes were bright, he was becoming angry. At least he was reacting now. It was a step forward.

‘At the end, we were a disaster, but most of the time we were okay.’

‘No, Edie. We weren’t. We never were “okay”. We pretended.’