‘Your mother still had the advantage, I can assure you. Your father was a dutiful man. He would never have abandoned you. He would never have let your mother take the ferry back alone, without him. Palma was going to win, as she did every year. On that particular day, 23 August 1989, he had decorated the table with yellow roses, while every other year they were red, for passion. In the language of roses, yellow means a plea for forgiveness, for a mistake, an infidelity. On Saint Rose’s Day she and your father would go and have the gourmet menu at Casa di Stella, they would spend the evening there, they would spend the night, make up for a year, until the following summer. Salomé had no choice, she had to bet everything she had on that evening. I suppose you remember that last evening, my darling, there were about fifteen of us around the table, friends, cousins, having a drink before going to the concert at the church of Santa Lucia in Prezzuna. But you can’t have known what happened next, you had left the table and gone to sleep on a bench with your music in your ears.’

Clotilde remembered those last moments. Her notebook, the crazy rhythm of Mano Negra, the shouting in the yard that she had ignored.

‘When Salomé came into the yard, holding the baby in her arms, we were all thunderstruck.’

There was a silence. Lisabetta seemed reluctant to continue. Slowly, Speranza got to her feet and walked towards the next room. When she came back, she merely swept aside the scraps of meat with her sleeve and set down a frame on the table. Without a word. It was a portrait. A very beautiful woman. Slightly luminous skin. Black almond-shaped eyes, a straight, slightly prominent nose, like the crest of a ridge cascading down towards her parted lips.

Definitely Salomé. Clotilde was disturbed by this stranger whose face and form seemed surprisingly familiar. Lisabetta raised her knife and pointed it at the photograph.

‘Yes, your mother and Salomé looked similar. That’s probably why your father first noticed her. Same eyes, same waist, same smile, same grace, but with added mystery.’

Clotilde stared at the portrait. Images rose to the surface, images that she had almost erased, of the first time she had seen Salomé, the day before the accident, at the Revellata lighthouse. From behind, never quite face on.

11.42 a.m.

Lisabetta firmly mixed the cubes of panzetta, the chopped figatelli, the onions, the thyme and the tomatoes, holding the wooden spoon in one hand and adding more oil with the other. For a moment she seemed to concentrate on her cooking, before turning down the gas under the frying pan and looking back at Clotilde.