Lisabetta was still standing there, not saying a word and asking no questions. Just waiting to be needed, like an object tucked neatly on a shelf, useful and in the right place if you wanted it. Solid, barely worn, just a little bent.

In contrast with her grandmother’s calm, Clotilde was panicking. Her hands flapped about, and she hesitated between running towards the Passat and taking a few seconds to sort out her head. It was all going too quickly, everything was a jumble. She didn’t have time to order all the information she was being given – her mother, her daughter, vanished but alive; at least she hoped so. She had to collect as many clues as possible, facts, facts, facts, perhaps everything would fall into place all of a sudden, at the right moment.

Cassanu had woken up. He was putting his hat back on his head, dazzled by the sun, with no clue as to what was going on all around him.

Clotilde took her grandmother’s hands.

‘Mamy, that notebook, my diary. After you picked it up, who kept it? You have to tell me, Mamy, it’s important. Who else did you show it to? Who else read it?’

Lisabetta’s hands tried to get away like a pair of captive butterflies.

‘I … I don’t know, my love.’

‘You didn’t show it to anyone?’

‘No.’

‘So … you … you’re the only one who’s read it?’

Tears welled in the corners of the old woman’s dark eyes. Her eyeliner ran, making her tragically beautiful.

‘What kind of a person do you think I am, my girl? I picked up your diary, of course I did. But I didn’t open it. It was yours. It was all yours. So I took it to the campsite, to your bungalow, with the rest of your belongings that we had at Arcanu, some clothes, some books, a bag. You were in hospital. We couldn’t have taken everything there.’

‘When I got out of hospital, Mamy, I was taken straight to the mainland. I never went back to the campsite.’

‘I know, my love, I know … Basile Spinello was supposed to collect all your belongings from the bungalow.’

Now Clotilde’s hands were trembling, while Lisabetta’s were calm, tame.

‘And that’s what he did, Mamy.’ She paused. ‘Basile brought me everything. Except the notebook.’

61

23 August 2016

He crushed the mobile phone against a long flat rock with the heel of his shoe. Even though he didn’t understand the technology, he had seen enough police dramas to suspect that a mobile phone, even one that was switched off, would be enough to betray their location. More or less precisely. Although that would require a certain amount of time.

So he wasn’t in a rush. While Valentine was reading her mother’s diary, her hands tied, mouth gagged, eyes wet with tears, he had studied the contents of the girl’s phone.