‘Lisabetta never agreed with me. She had, let’s say, different ideas. But she never said anything. Lisa is a loyal wife. She respected our choice.’

‘The men’s choice?’

‘If you like, Clotilde. But Speranza was on our side too.’

‘What happened, Papé? What happened after the accident?’

The old Corsican’s cane struck the ground as if testing its solidity.

‘Everything happened very quickly that evening. We heard about the accident shortly after 9 p.m., it was Cesareu Garcia who called me, he was at the scene of the accident and described what he saw. The car in the Petra Coda ravine. The absence of any survivors apart from you. Otherwise, no one knew anything. Was it an accident? Murder? Revenge? I had a few enemies in those days.’ An enigmatic smile flitted across his face. ‘At the time I imagined all kinds of possibilities, but my first decision was to find your mother. She had fled Arcanu Farm, but the last words she had cried out under the tree still echoed in my head: “off you go with her, but don’t take the children in the car”. It was like a threat, as if she knew what was going to happen.’

Clotilde said nothing. She turned round and looked towards La Revellata several hundred metres below them. From that distance, the wooded peninsula, edged with tiny beaches, a few scattered villas and small white paths, could have been paradise. What an illusion. A peninsula is also a cul-de-sac.

Cassanu followed her gaze.

‘It wasn’t hard to guess where your mother would go. I sent two men, Miguel and Simeone, who caught her near the Revellata lighthouse, just above Natale Angeli’s home, just before she could reach her lover.’

The ghost, Clotilde thought, the ghost that Natale had seen that evening. The spectre that had haunted him all his life. The truth seemed so simple now. So obvious. Natale hadn’t been dreaming. It was Palma who had smiled at him on the hill by Punta Rossa, before Cassanu’s men caught up with her. It was Palma who had come to see him, probably to give herself to him that evening, or merely to weep in his arms. Who could know? No one, not even them.

They continued along a track that smelled of lavender. On their right, they passed a rock filled with bullet-holes. Cassanu had chosen his route carefully; Clotilde remembered that this was called the Federate Rock, because Corsican resistance fighters had been executed there in September 1943, a few weeks before the liberation of the island. Cassanu merely ran his fingers along the bullet-holes as he continued his story.