Joe kicked at a small ridge of grubby crystals spread the width of the front door. He picked up the plastic sack that had once contained the salt granules to show me.
‘Why is it there?’ I asked.
Joe mumbled something.
‘What?’
‘It’s to protect the villa. It’s a Sicilian thing.’
‘Protect it from what? Slugs?’
‘It’s just what they do here,’ said Joe, defensive again.
I heard something, like a sigh. I turned; nothing was there.
‘What was that?’ I asked Joe.
‘I don’t know.’
As he spoke, something fluttered from the darkness and darted towards us. I gasped and ducked, covering my head with my arms and Joe ducked too and then laughed.
‘Oh Jesus, it’s just a sparrow!’ He stood straight. ‘Poor little sod must have been trapped.’
I smiled, but inside my heart was pounding.
Because of the shutters, the interior of the villa was dark as a cave, but behind us sunbeams spread through the open door across the ornate tiles of the hallway floor. I stepped slowly over the ridge of salt into my own shadow. Despite the musty smell, the floor was clean, save a feather or two. A giant, crystal chandelier, draped with cobwebs, hung high above us, filling in the dome of the ceiling, glass droplets trapping the reflection of light from the floor tiles and sending them out again; twinkling the effect of an elaborate disco ball.
Joe tried the light switch, but nothing happened.
Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. Two large items of furniture stood in the hallway, both covered with dust sheets. To one side of the door was an arch shaped alcove with candleholders on either side. The hallway opened into a long, dark room to its right and, to the left, stairs led upwards. Three other doors along its length were closed. A small brown object, like a fossilised croissant, lay at the foot of the stairs.
Joe picked the thing up and tossed it outside.
‘What was it?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Joe?’
‘It was a sheep’s horn.’
‘A sheep’s horn?’
‘It’s to keep the villa safe. Don’t worry about it.’
I gave a small laugh. ‘A whole sack of salt and a sheep’s horn. That’s a lot of precautions.’
‘When you live on an island that’s been invaded so many times, you’re bound to be worried about people breaking in to your property,’ said Joe.
But that wasn’t the reason for the salt and the horn and we both knew it. The villa had been made secure already; the planks over the doors and shutters would keep vandals and burglars out. These objects were to protect against a different kind of intruder.
Joe switched on the torch on his phone, directed the light into the alcove and moved the beam around, into every corner.
‘It’s not there,’ he said.
‘What isn’t?’
‘The painting, the Madonna del Mare.’
‘The one your mother was worried about?’
He nodded and ran the flat of his hand along the ledge of the alcove. There was a brighter patch in the paintwork, where a picture had hung for many years.
‘What does it look like?’ I asked.
‘The frame’s about so big,’ Joe described a rectangle approximately two feet square, the space of the brighter patch on the wall. ‘The picture inside is quite small. The Madonna’s praying but looking out of the image so she catches your eye. In the background are ships and the sea.’
He dusted his hands and wiped his palms on the sides of his shorts.
‘We have to find it,’ he said. ‘I promised Anna.’
Anna, Anna, Anna. Always Anna.
We went upstairs, keeping close, me following Joe, our feet leaving faint prints in the dust. It was strange to think we were the first people to disturb this air, to breathe it, for years. If I narrowed my eyes, I could almost see other people, those who had been here before, passing us on the stairs, trotting down: adults with towels bundled under their arms, children in shorts and T-shirts running to play outside; Anna, trailed by her imaginary siblings; Daniel.
It made sense that Daniel should be here. He was a DeLuca. DeLuca blood ran through his veins. This villa should have been his destiny. It should have been where he came for his summer holidays, as his father had. He would have loved this place and it didn’t seem such a large leap of faith to believe that he was here, now, somehow, with all the other lost DeLucas.
Joe looked over his shoulder. ‘You okay, Edie?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m great.’
At the top of the stairs was a landing with the three arched windows we’d seen from the outside; seven feet tall at their highest point, rims of light at their edges. Joe opened the catch of the middle one and the two halves of the window swung open towards him. He pushed open the wooden shutters behind. They clattered back and light flooded onto the landing.
Joe stepped out onto the balcony and I followed. The ghosts retreated into the shadows. The sun sent its warmth and light into the Villa della Madonna del Mare, lighting the pale pink plaster on the walls, illuminating the fancy coving, the pictures and the fittings, the cobwebs, the floating motes of dust.
Joe and I rested our hands on the ornate balcony railings and looked through the trees out across the sea beyond and the perfect, blue sky. Gulls wheeled above the water.
When Anna wrote her will, she’d have had this exact scene in her mind. She must have known we’d climb the stairs to open the shutters and that we’d stand here, in the sunlight. She was probably imagining that Joe and I would fall into one another’s arms and then be grateful to her for reuniting us. If that was the case, then she could hardly have been more wrong. But if, by bringing me here, she had inadvertently given me the means to bring Daniel closer to me, then I would make the most of every second I’d been given.
14
While Joe removed the planks from the downstairs windows, I opened the upstairs windows and shutters, letting light into rooms that had been dark for years. I gazed out across acres of gardens, which we hadn’t yet explored, looking for the little graveyard, but the gardens were so overgrown it was a hopeless task.
From the rear bedrooms,
