the person you loved most, the one you were supposed to protect, the one who gave meaning to your own life. After Joe and I separated, although I felt guilty about it and sometimes faintly ridiculous, I’d found myself drawn towards tarot cards and mediums, standing stones and old churchyards, anything that might bring me closer to Daniel. He had to be somewhere, I reasoned, at least his spirit did. A soul so vital, so loving and bright and energetic couldn’t just disappear. If I looked hard enough, for long enough, I would find him. I was convinced of it.
‘Did your grandparents ever mention anything about the villa being haunted?’ I asked.
‘No. But…’
‘What?’
‘When they’d had a drink or two, they used to talk to their ancestors as if they were still there. They said the DeLucas never really left the villa, even the ones who moved away.’
‘Even the ones who died?’
He nodded.
‘There’s nothing strange about it,’ Joe said defensively, even though I hadn’t said anything at all to suggest there was. ‘It was a way of remembering, that’s all. Keeping memories alive.’
‘Sure,’ I said. I wondered if, privately, Joe had been harbouring hopes similar to mine, that some part of Daniel might still exist somewhere in the world.
And then I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years: a conversation I’d had with Anna when Daniel was only a few months old. She’d told me that before she was born, her mother had delivered three stillborn children; one after the other. Anna’s three dead siblings hadn’t been baptised and couldn’t be buried in consecrated land, so her father had buried them in the villa’s gardens. Her mother had kept the baptismal gowns she’d hand sewn for each baby and a photograph of each of them hung in an alcove in her bedroom, where she knelt to pray several times a day.
Anna had been drinking when she told me this story. When she wasn’t drinking, she was quiet and private. After a bottle of wine, she became more willing to talk about herself and her feelings. That day, she’d been trying to explain her relationship with her parents and how heavily the burden of their expectations had weighed upon her shoulders.
I’d held my baby to my shoulder and rubbed his back as Anna had talked. Daniel’s head had lolled against my neck, fitting the space exactly. Anna’s breath was warm and musty and her face had softened as she recalled how, when she was alone as a child, playing in the villa’s gardens, she used to go to the little graveyard and summon her dead sisters and brother to play with her; how they were her imaginary friends, older than her, and younger at the same time. She used to sneak into her mother’s room to talk to the photographs of the babies; she brought little gifts to the graves to keep them happy. Usually they were kind: when she was lonely or frightened, they came to her and comforted her, but sometimes they were jealous of Anna, because she was alive and they were dead. Then they’d play tricks on her. They’d break glasses and plates and Anna was blamed, or they’d lock her out of her room or shut her in a cupboard.
‘That must have been frightening for you,’ I’d said. We were sitting together in the front room of her London house, sunlight streaming through the window.
Anna took another sip from her glass.
‘I felt responsible for them,’ she’d replied. ‘I understood why they were angry. It didn’t seem fair that I had everything and they had nothing.’ Then she’d taken another sip and she’d laughed. Her teeth had been stained red. ‘It wasn’t real of course! It was all made up. I was just a lonely, introverted, stupid little child!’
Now I wondered if part of the reason for her bequest to us was to protect the graves of these lost children, these siblings who had never drawn breath but who had been such an important part of Anna’s early years. And another thought came to me, one so crazy that I pushed it away and wouldn’t acknowledge it.
Still, it was there.
If three stillborn DeLuca babies could come back to life, even in a small way, at the Villa della Madonna del Mare, was it possible, was there the faintest, smallest hope that I might be able to find Daniel there too?
13
Joe and I returned to the car and drove back along the spine of the headland, through flat, marshy land at the base of the cliff. The sun glinted from pylons and mechanical equipment at an electricity station in the distance. A giant billboard with a picture of a blonde woman modelling Intimissimi lingerie marked the junction with the coast road, which climbed steeply. I tried to relax but the cliff side fall to the left was perilous. There was no barrier and Joe drove quickly, one palm flat against the steering wheel, his fingers not even closed around it. I couldn’t help imaging the Fiat bouncing down against the rocks, somersaulting, crashing into the backs of the holiday villas that were built along the beach. I was used to travelling at Fitz’s ponderous pace, she gripping both sides of the steering wheel of her ancient VW camper, leaning forward, her foot hovering over the brake pedal, tensed and alert to any forthcoming potential hazard, real or imaginary. I could barely remember the last time I’d ridden in a vehicle driven by anyone other than Fitz. My life was mostly lived within a few square miles: Fitz’s house, the school, the places I walked the dogs, the shops and the library, all of it travelled slowly, safely. My comfort zone.
This was different. Two thousand miles from home, the headland on which the villa stood was silhouetted against the dazzling sea, shimmering like a mirage, and Joe and I zipped along the coast road in the Fiat, he having no regard for the fact that a blown tyre or a patch of oil would send us hurtling to our deaths.
Soon enough, we reached the villa. Joe parked the car in the same spot as before. The sun was high in the sky, the colours dazzling. Light shone on the whitewashed façades of the beach houses, it glared from windows, roof tiles, parked cars. The beach was busy; littered with parasols and towels. Close to our end, a small white dog ran at the sea, chasing the rippling frill as the waves broke along the shore. A young woman in a red bikini clapped her hands and laughed at the dog’s antics. ‘Bravo, Toto!’ she cried. ‘Bravo!’
I helped Joe unload the bags of cleaning provisions and food and we carried them through the gates, up the drive and to the front door of the villa. The garden was lovelier in the bright daylight than it had been in the glow of dusk; its rampant, gleeful chaos, the jungle of greens and the jewelled colours of the flowers seeming more alive than ever: fronds and tendrils and opening blooms reaching up into the beautiful blue of the sky; lemons and oranges grew profusely on the trees, insects and birds were everywhere. I wondered where the graveyard was, where the three lost babies had been buried. The thought of them lying somewhere nearby sent a chill the length of my spine, but I dismissed it. It was a beautiful day and we were in a lovely place; the sun was shining and I’d be an idiot to be distracted by the darkness of my imagination.
Joe and I were outside the villa’s front door, in the same spot where Anna and her two friends had posed for the picture reproduced on the poster on the memorial wall. I sat on a stone planter that contained nothing but dead foliage and waited while Joe prised away the planks that had been hammered over the front door with the claw end of a hammer. The wood splintered as he pulled. He tossed the planks down to one side, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his arm and turned to me. ‘Where’s the key?’
I gave it to him and he put it in the lock, turned it. The door swung open with a sorrowful groan. We exchanged tentative glances and then Joe stepped into the gloom. I followed. Something crunched beneath the soles of my trainers.
‘What’s
