What’s the name of the agent? I need to get things moving. Please respond asap as a matter of urgency.

There was also a string of WhatsApp messages from Fitz. I could see from the preview that the first was a link to a biography of Guido Reni and the second was the URL of an auction house in Milan. I kept one arm around the box, but with the other I clicked on the link. It took me to an online catalogue for a forthcoming sale. There was a photograph of a picture that was captioned: Annunziata – Reni, Guido, C1620.

I expanded the picture with my fingertips. It was a beautiful painting. The face of the girl who had posed for the portrait of the angel in the picture was so vital, she could easily have been one of the young women who were currently opening up their parasols on the beach outside Porta Sarina. And the colours, the pale blues and pinks, the creamy complexion of the model’s skin, the delicacy and intricacy of the needlework on her dress, oh, it was a lovely thing. To think that a work by this same artist had hung in the alcove in the hallway of our villa for two centuries! I clicked on the description of the Annunziata. Its guide price was half a million euros.

I wanted to tell Joe, but the coast road was busy and the steepness of the fall down the mountain was a constant source of worry to me. He needed to concentrate on his driving.

Instead, I read Reni’s biography. He had been an artist of the high baroque style. He had mainly concentrated on religious subjects and had been prolific in his output. I found dozens of images of the Madonna that he had painted with the sea in the background, but none of them matched Joe’s description of our Madonna del Mare.

A knot of excitement twisted inside me. Half a million euros! Enough money to restore the villa, put in a new swimming pool, do whatever we wanted! Ideas chased through my mind. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so enthusiastic about anything.

We drove on into Porta Sarina, my eyes on the kittens, but my mind in the villa, imagining it restored, with people in it; long lunches in the courtyard, children playing in the gardens, people sunning themselves around the pool; the graveyard made into a quiet, private place where we could go to remember Daniel and grow flowers for the dead babies; the kittens carrying on their cat heritage in the grounds. Once I found a way to apologise to Joe, to make him realise that I’d changed, then surely he’d be able to see the vision too.