Just thinking about it slows me down. As it does every time, the sight of this amazing view. Wondering what giant palette could have produced all the shades of red on the peninsula and the turquoise in the water. Is God a bearded painter who created the world with three brushes and an easel? I like that thought. I stare at the houses peeping out between the rocks in the Port of Stareso; they’re built into the cliff like caves, but a cubed version. Down at the doll-sized jetty, there’s no sign of the Aryon.

This time I stop, I concentrate on the sea, empty but for a ferry as yellow as a scrap of sun. I hesitate. I tell myself that the best thing to do would be to stay here, up on La Revellata, in the blazing sun, in the battering wind, and look out towards the horizon. Natale’s boat will have to come back to port. I just have to pull my Bon Jovi cap over my ears, put on my dark glasses and sit on a rock.

‘Waiting for your boyfriend?’

The voice behind me made me start.

‘Who’s that?’

‘Your boyfriend! The old man.’

The voice belongs to Cervone Spinello, and I realise that the bastard has been spying on me, that he knows all about Natale. Unless his father, Basile, has been shooting his mouth off. I’d be surprised.

‘My boyfriend? That’s rubbish! It’s strictly business between me and Natale Angeli.’

‘I hope so for your sake. Because Angeli likes them old.’

I can’t even be bothered to defend myself in front of this fool. His eye is fixed on Recisa cove, the bay to the south of La Revellata that is colonised by wind-surfers. It’s the best spot in the Balagne according to the guys in wetsuits who sometimes crowd into the shower block at the Euproctes.

‘Listen,’ Cervone goes on. ‘I understand Angeli. The older women are the ones with the money. You see that inlet down there, the one that the sailing boats leave from? That’s where I’m going to set up shop as soon as I can.’

He’s right, the bastard. Out at sea, the dance of the windsurfers is crazy, a mad ballet of coloured wings. On the other hand, I don’t see where that dimwit Cervone could set up shop, Recisa Bay is all rocks and stones, more soil than sand, battered by the wind and the shifting dunes.

I continue to gaze out from the peninsula, from one sea to the other, still waiting for the return of the Aryon.

‘There’s nothing on Recisa beach.’

‘Exactly. I’m going to open a beach bar there. With parasols so that you can read in the shade and games for children.’

I must have looked at him oddly. I didn’t think reading and kids were really Cervone’s thing.