The House by the Sea. Louise Douglas

of keys. Attached to each key with a short length of string was a brown paper label describing the door that it opened. The writing on the labels was sparse and neat; Anna’s.

      We all shook hands and the assistant disappeared and returned a few moments later with a tray. On the tray were four small glasses filled with a pale coloured liqueur. We each took a glass.

      ‘A saluti!’ said the avvocato. He raised his glass to me and then to Joe. ‘Congratulations and good luck to you both!’

      I wondered if he’d ever had a couple drink a less enthusiastic toast to their future.

      7

      Back in the car, Joe passed the document wallet to me and I held it on my lap.

      ‘I told the lawyer we wanted to sell the villa,’ he said. ‘He’s going to put us in touch with an agent, but he’s already had an enquiry from someone interested in buying it.’

      ‘Do you know who?’

      ‘Some friend of the family.’

      Joe reached for his seat belt and pulled it across his body.

      ‘So, it shouldn’t take too long?’ I asked.

      ‘No.’

      ‘And you’ll get the money you need.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘What are you going to do with it?’ I asked. He’d been evasive last time the subject was raised and I wondered if he was intending to spend the money impressing a new partner or something similar. His answer surprised me.

      ‘I want to help young addicts.’

      ‘Oh?’

      ‘To give them the skills they need to set themselves up for work. Practical skills, I mean: garden design, landscaping, that kind of thing.’

      ‘Sounds great,’ I said, and it did, and it was great that Joe was going to use his inheritance for the good, but of all the disadvantaged young people he could have helped, why had he chosen addicts? Well, I knew why obviously, but it irked me nonetheless. I couldn’t help feeling badly about it.

      ‘So, is that it?’ I asked, to change the subject. ‘Are we done now? Can I go home?’ I’d bought an open ticket, not knowing how long I’d be in Sicily, but the prospect of returning so quickly was enticing.

      ‘There’s still stuff that needs doing.’

      ‘What stuff?’

      ‘The contents of the villa…’ He glanced to me. ‘We need to decide what to keep and what to sell.’

      ‘You can do that,’ I said. ‘They’re your family’s possessions.’

      Joe started the engine and lowered the windows.

      ‘Some of it’s quite valuable,’ he said, ‘and half of it belongs to 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