you.’
I detected a note of bitterness in that observation and replied quickly: ‘I don’t want anything.’ Certainly nothing that used to belong to Anna. ‘You decide what to do with it. You’ll know what to keep.’
Joe took off the handbrake and manoeuvred the car out of its spot. As we moved, a flock of sparrows fluttered out of the tree; tiny shadows flickered over my arms and face. Behind us, Ragusa’s walls basked in the golden glow of the lowering sun.
‘There’s a particular painting,’ Joe said. ‘Anna meant to take it to the bank last time she was in Sicily, but she never got round to it. It haunted her.’
‘The painting? Why?’
‘She’d promised her mother she’d look after it.’
‘Is it valuable?’
‘I don’t know,’ Joe said. ‘It’s old.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be okay,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ replied Joe. ‘Let’s hope so.’
We drove on. The longer I sat beside Joe in the car, the less I wanted to be there. The prospect of spending days, weeks even maybe, going through his family’s possessions – his grandmother’s fusty old lady things, congealed pots of face cream and personal items belonging to her and to Anna, things I would not want to see or touch, filled me with dismay. I didn’t know if I would be able to bear it.
After a while, a thought occurred to me.
‘Rather than us having to do it, couldn’t we pay someone to go in to the villa and sort out the contents?’ I asked.
‘Pay someone?’ Joe sounded as if the suggestion had appalled him.
‘There are people who’ll do that kind of thing, look at what’s valuable and what’s not and…’
‘A stranger? You want us to employ a stranger to go through my family’s things?’
Oh for goodness sake, I thought, you’re happy enough to sell the villa, why make a song and dance about what’s inside? Although I was bristling, I continued in a perfectly reasonable tone of voice.
‘Not some random stranger, but a professional. Someone without any emotional connection who could be more objective.’
Joe frowned. ‘You sound as if you think an emotional connection is a bad thing.’
‘I didn’t say that, and you know that’s not what I meant. I’m only trying to be practical. It would save you having to feel bad about throwing things away. It would be less hassle all round.’
‘I promised Anna we’d deal with our inheritance together.’
Anna scheming again! She’d thought of every little way to manipulate the two of us.
‘You might have promised her, but I didn’t and it’s not like it matters to her now. Why put yourself – and me, through all that?’
Joe’s hands were gripping the steering wheel and I knew from his expression that I’d said too much. I should have stopped there, but I couldn’t help myself.
‘House clearance experts would sort it out in no time and we wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of hiring a skip or whatever.’
Joe remained silent while we waited at a roundabout, but as we joined the road that would take us towards the coast, he said: ‘You’ve changed, Edie. You used to be kind.’
That was hurtful but I didn’t bite back at him. I didn’t want our sniping to develop into a full blown fight.
‘I’m being practical, that’s all,’ I said quietly.
‘Whatever,’ he said.
I twisted the ribbon of the shirt around my hand. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I had changed but if I had it was because of Anna and what she’d done to me. Grief had made me bitter and anger had made me harder, but that wasn’t my fault, was it? I hadn’t asked for Daniel to be taken from me. If I was no longer a kind person, then Anna was to blame. She had ruined everything.
We continued in silence. Joe was in a bad mood now, but he hadn’t stopped to think how difficult this was for me. I was dreading seeing the villa for the first time, dreading it becoming real to me.
I stared out of the window, every atom aching with tension.
8
Some of Sicily was beautiful, but some of it wasn’t. We passed scruffy smallholdings, little farms, glossy horses standing in the shade of trees in fields surrounded by drystone walls, their tails twitching away the flies. We went through ugly industrial and retail estates. We saw car parks and pylons and yellow McDonald’s signs and overflowing, communal rubbish bins; a giant quarry. I made a mental note of the bad and refused to allow myself to be enchanted by the good. It made me uncomfortable thinking of Anna thinking of me; she imagining how I’d feel when I came here for the first time. I made up my mind not to appreciate any of it.
After we’d driven in silence for more than an hour, we crested the ridge of a wooded hill and the sea came into view below us, taking me by surprise; a sparkling, jewel green sea that faded into a turquoise haze at the horizon.
‘Wow,’ I breathed, forgetting to be surly.
‘The light,’ Joe said quietly. ‘I’d forgotten the light.’
He slowed the car and pulled over to the side of the road. We both looked over the vista, taking the time to savour it.
‘When was the last time you were here?’ I asked Joe.
‘Twenty years, maybe.’
‘That’s a long time.’
‘Yeah.’
‘The villa’s down there,’ he said, indicating a small headland to one side of the bay. On the other was a larger headland, with a road running along its spine and a little town at the end. I could just make out a harbour, masts bobbing distantly, and a lighthouse that looked as if it belonged on a postcard. ‘We could drive down and have a quick look at what we’ve inherited before it gets dark.’
‘Okay, but Joe, I haven’t booked any accommodation for tonight. Have you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Will we be able to find somewhere?’
‘There’s a hotel in Porta Sarina.’ Joe nodded towards the town.
‘They’ll definitely have room, will they?’
‘Yep,’ he replied.
‘Do you think we should call them now?’
‘It’ll
