The House by the Sea. Louise Douglas

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, I could see the old swimming pool, a derelict hole in the shape of two interlocking circles, one large, one small, surrounded by concrete tiles, and an abandoned pool house in the centre of what now looked like a wildflower meadow but probably used to be a fine lawn. I could imagine Joe and his friends playing in that pool: dive-bombing one another, seeing who could hold their breath the longest, sunning themselves around it. I could imagine Valentina there, a playful young girl, peering over the top of her sunglasses. I could picture Anna, standing where I was standing, watching the youngsters at a distance, enjoying their happiness. I wondered if, back then, she had any premonition of what might become of Joe; the terrible direction his life would take because of her. I wondered if, sensitive as she was to the past, she ever intuited my future presence, the former daughter-in-law who hated her.

      When the upstairs windows were all open, Joe called me down and we went through the ground floor rooms together. The villa had been closed up with care, and carefully we set about reopening it. Years of darkness meant the colours on the soft furnishings hadn’t faded. The rooms were tidy: good furniture shrouded in dust sheets; glasses and ornaments put away in cupboards to keep them clean.

      I was awed by the stillness inside those rooms, the huge chandeliers, the beautiful old paper on the walls. I walked through the villa, hearing my footsteps, my heartbeat, not spooked exactly but unwilling to look too closely at the white sheets that covered the furniture – they looked as if they might undrape themselves at any moment and in the extremes of bright light and dark shadows it was difficult to guess what lay beneath.

      When the shutters were open and the villa was airing, Joe and I went outside into the garden. We coughed the dust out of our lungs and picked cobwebs from our hair and clothes. Joe’s face was grey with dirt and mine must have been the same.

      ‘Is there anywhere we can wash?’ I asked.

      ‘There’s the sea.’

      I followed him through the garden, through a gap in the hedge, past the swimming pool, a tarpaulin that once covered it wrinkled in the bottom amongst dead leaves and dirt, and across the old lawn. At the farthest end, a path wound between overgrown oleander trees to steps that led down to a decked area a few feet above the sea. The rusting skeletons of two sunbeds had been pushed up against the steps. Someone had gone to the trouble of attaching a metal ladder to the far end of the decking in a narrow gap between the rocks so it was possible to climb over the sharp rock face down into the water without scraping one’s knees and elbows. The sea slapped laconically against the scarred face of the rocks.

      I held onto the side of the ladder and looked down. The water was crystal-clear, and very deep. Different kinds of fish swam in layers close to the rocks, sunlight glinted in the water, and deeper down, weed the colour of rubies waved its delicate fronds. The sun beat down on my back. The water was enticing.

      Daniel would have loved this, I thought, and for the briefest instant I felt him with me, holding on to my hand, looking down into the water.

      Joe had come to stand beside me. He looked over my shoulder, almost, but not quite, touching me. I could feel the warmth of his body.

      ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I’m going in.’

      He stepped back, took off his boots and socks, pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on the decking. He pulled down his shorts and stepped out of them. He was wearing dark blue boxer shorts beneath, with a black, elasticated belt. He ran past me, leapt over the steps and somersaulted into the water. He reappeared a way away from the decking, shaking his head, droplets flying from his hair and sparkling in the light. He did not call to me but swam out to sea.

      I wanted to be in there too.

      Beneath my clothes, I was wearing ordinary, mismatched, comfortable underwear. Fitz had insisted I bring my swimming costume, in case the opportunity to spend some time at the beach arose, but the costume was in my suitcase,