The House by the Sea. Louise Douglas

said Joe.

      ‘Yeah,’ said Valentina. ‘Thanks. What about you? Are you here on holiday? Is Anna with you?’

      Joe shook his head and explained the reason for our visit.

      Valentina paled when she heard Anna was dead. ‘Oh my, I’m sorry!’ she said, looking from me to Joe and back again. ‘You’ve both had such a terrible time.’ So she knew about Daniel. She gave me a sad smile. ‘At least you have each other.’

      Joe pursed his lips. I tried to make my expression neutral.

      ‘Actually, we’re not together any more,’ Joe said.

      ‘We’re only here to sell the villa,’ I added.

      ‘We divorced after our son’s death.’

      ‘Ten years ago.’

      Valentina said, ‘Oh God. I’m so sorry! Me and my big, stupid mouth!’

      ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said.

      ‘Fine,’ agreed Joe.

      ‘It was a long time ago.’

      ‘We’re both fine.’ That’s us. Everything is fine, fine, fine.

      There was a moment’s awkward silence, then Valentina said, ‘Vito and me, we run the pizzeria by the harbour. Why don’t you come up one evening? For pizza?’

      ‘Okay,’ said Joe.

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Great.’

      Valentina’s phone pinged, an incoming text. She looked at the screen and her smile faded. ‘I’ve got to go. Don’t forget to come see us. Best pizza in town!’ She blew us both a kiss then returned to her basket.

      Joe put his hands on the handle of our trolley and pushed it towards the till.

      ‘She seems nice,’ I said, as we queued.

      ‘She is.’

      ‘She was pleased to see you.’

      ‘We used to be good friends.’ Joe scratched the bottom of his earlobe.

      ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Why are you smiling like that?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘Tell me.’

      ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’

      ‘Joe!’

      ‘Okay, okay. It’s just… once, when we were teenagers, Valentina jumped off the floating dock into the sea and pretended she had cramp so I would dive in and save her.’ His smile was wide now. ‘She was a good actress! I believed she was drowning. I pulled her up, put my hand under her chin, like this,’ he demonstrated with his hand on his own chin, ‘and paddled her back to the beach, lay her on the sand and…’ he tailed off.

      ‘Gave her the kiss of life?’ I asked.

      ‘Something like that, yeah.’ He grinned, delighted but embarrassed.

      I knew there was someone in Sicily for Joe. I remembered how, when he came back to London at the beginning of September each year, tanned and taller after the summer holiday spent with his mother’s family, he’d be different for a while, less friendly towards me. It always took a few weeks for our friendship to get back on course. Now I knew why.

      ‘I only found out she’d been pretending ages after,’ Joe continued. ‘I boasted to everyone that I’d saved this girl’s life, but then she told Anna she had a crush on me and couldn’t think of another way to get me to kiss her.’

      ‘Oh. Right.’

      Joe looked at me. ‘What?’

      ‘If she liked you, why didn’t she just tell you that she did? Why go to all that trouble?’

      ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was shy.’

      ‘She doesn’t seem shy.’

      ‘Why are you making such a big deal of it?’ Joe asked.

      ‘I’m not. It’s a sweet story.’

      I didn’t mean to be sarcastic, but that was the way it sounded. We both heard the scorn in my voice.

      Joe turned from me, disappointed. I didn’t bother trying to apologise. I couldn’t wait until all of this was over and we could go our separate ways and we’d never have to see one another again. Dear God, I hoped that moment would soon be here.

      12

      I needed some sun protection lotion and Joe said there was a pharmacy in town and that it would be quicker to leave the car and walk.

      I followed him along the narrow pavements. He looked more like himself this morning. He was wearing a scruffy old T-shirt and a pair of shorts that had seen better days, together with a pair of working boots and mismatched socks. I’d put on an old cotton maxi-dress, trainers, a floppy straw hat and a pair of sunglasses.

      Porta Sarina was not a picture postcard town. The buildings were shabby, pockmarked stone, cat shit in the gunnels and weeds growing from the guttering. Washing was strung between the upper windows of the houses across the alleyways: knock-off designer tracksuits, football shirts and shorts; lines of bright-pink baby vests. Recycling bins overflowed at street corners and there was a pervasive smell of fish.

      As we approached the main piazza, we came to a wall covered in posters. They were mostly handmade, black and white. Printed on them were photographs, family snapshots or professional portraits, and beside the images were dates and lines of writing.

      ‘What is this?’ I asked Joe.

      ‘It’s the memorial wall.’

      ‘These are dead people?’

      ‘Yeah. People put up posters on birthdays and anniversaries.’

      ‘Ugh.’

      ‘“Ugh” what?’

      ‘It’s macabre.’

      ‘Or you could look at it as being a loving tradition, a way of keeping people’s memories alive.’

      ‘I suppose,’ I said, without conviction.

      My eyes skimmed the posters. All the faces, dozens of them, united in death. Some of the faces were of young men who, according to their dates, had died in the war, decades earlier. There was a picture of a swaddled baby: Cancio, Egidia; nato morto, and next to it a small boy, about the same age as Daniel, Cancio, Matteo. Oh God, two children lost from the same family!

      Beside me, Joe caught his breath. ‘Look!’

      To one side of the wall, amongst the many images, was a poster bearing the words: DeLuca, Anna, 66 years old. Beloved friend. Death will not keep us apart. Beneath was a photocopied picture of three young women standing in front of the Villa della Madonna del Mare, not as it was now, but as it once must have been, well kept, its gardens tended. The front door was ajar; the shutters on the downstairs windows opened wide. A young version of Anna was in the centre of the group; dark hair cut in a short bob. She was wearing pedal pushers and a gingham top with capped sleeves. To one side of her, a small girl with frizzy hair was grinning at the camera; to the other, a taller, more solidly built young woman stood slightly back. The face of the third girl had been erased; whoever had done it had scratched at the paper so viciously it was torn.

      ‘Who could have put that up?’ I asked Joe.

      ‘I guess Anna still has friends here.’

      ‘But the girl’s face…’

      ‘I know. It’s weird.’

      I picked at the edge of the paper, pulled at it. A small strip tore away in my hand.

      ‘Leave it,’ Joe said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’