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But the dream of one day travelling to Italy with her son to view Caravaggio’s artworks kept her going somehow. Some were in Spain and France and America. Some were in Berlin – probably pillaged, she thought – while others were disputed as to whether they were his work. More still had disappeared into the rooms of private collectors, never to be seen by the public, while some had disappeared from existence, presumed destroyed. She had heard via the cathedral curator that St Matthew and the Angel had been destroyed in Berlin, where it had been in a museum; she didn’t know if it had been stolen, or destroyed during the bombing. Either way, it hurt her heart to think of it being burned and shredded when it had so much to offer the world.

Many of her peers, those who had survived the raids, were looking to the other side of the world these days, sailing for Australia, where so many Italian and Maltese migrants had gone. Their letters spoke of a better life than at home.

The devastation of the war was still all around the city. Broken buildings, broken hearts.

Valletta reflected her own state. She was broken too.

And yet there had been a moment, back in 1942, at the height of the war, surrounded by fear and hunger and the unfairness of it all, that she had glimpsed intense happiness.

When she’d met Peter, she had been a girl with stars in her eyes and it had felt like the future was opening up to her with possibility far beyond what she’d ever dreamed of.

All that had been between them was friendship, and a shared love of art and history, and yet she’d experienced such a deep connection to him.

When he’d been sent back to England, it had shattered her teenage heart and the pieces had never mended properly, held together with scar tissue and then her undying love for her child. Her heart had never yearned for anyone else. Even after more than a decade, now as a woman, a wife, a mother, she could say with certainty that Peter Fox was the only man she would ever love.

When she turned the pages of the Caravaggio book he’d given her, she felt as though she was touching him in some way, since he had turned the same pages before her. She thought about him often, but she’d learned how to bury the pain of the loss of him. Did he ever think of her? Probably not. She had been an amusing child to him, that was all, but he probably had children of his own now, with Delia.

About two years into her miserable marriage, after a miscarriage, she had given birth to Danjel, who thankfully showed little resemblance to the Falzons. Instead he seemed to echo her brother Ganni so closely it was as though his spirit had been born again, after he’d been crushed by a falling building that had been bombed a few months after the wedding.

Everyone had noticed the resemblance as Danjel grew, and Lawrenz had taken offence, as was his way. After his initial pride in having a son, he now all but ignored the child, who was a Camilleri through and through. When he did interact with Danjel, his manner was cold, often cruel, certainly uncaring. It was so opposite to the way in which she had been raised. Lawrenz, she knew, had been held to high standards by his parents; he was the eldest of their sons, the best looking, the one tasked with taking over the business. In fairness to his parents, they adored Danjel. If they noticed their son’s coldness towards their grandson, they said nothing; Lawrenz was now a bull of a man and she the envy of all her peers for her good-looking husband.

You can have him, she thought when she noticed them eyeing him. She didn’t care that he had affairs, either, if it spared her his rough attention, and she certainly wasn’t jealous of any affection he might show others. She and Lawrenz didn’t like each other – never had. He’d always seemed to find her intelligence unnerving, and now he resented the close relationship she had with their son.

‘Lawrenz, you give him no attention,’ she argued, when he made snide comments.

‘There’s no room for me,’ he scoffed. ‘You smother him.’

‘That’s rubbish. I am simply trying to give him the love and confidence that both of us should be instilling in him. A boy needs a father!’ Not that you’re a role model, she thought, every time they had the same argument.

‘You’re more than enough, Leni.’

‘What is your problem with Danjel?’

‘He’s a sissy. A mummy’s boy.’

She took a breath. ‘He’s not, you know. He craves your attention. He wants to kick a ball with you, play at your side, learn from you.’

He shook his head.

‘Lawrenz, why do you not like him?’

That question seemed to break through and he carelessly shrugged, his eyes slightly glazed and tired from yet another glass of wine. ‘A man likes his son to be clearly from his seed. But Danjel doesn’t look like me. He doesn’t walk like me. He could be another man’s child for all I know. I’d think he was Robertu’s if he didn’t look so much like your brother.’ He’d paused to meet her eye with a sly look. ‘Is he his?’

No breath would come, she was so shocked. She had to force her lungs to expand and then expel. ‘Lawrenz,’ she began in a small voice. ‘That’s a hateful accusation.’

‘And still I make it,’ he growled. ‘Maybe you slept with your brother.’

‘You are loathsome,’ she said, her voice stretched thin with horror.

‘You may deny it, but he is a Camilleri through and through, not a sniff of me.’

‘I’ll grant you he does look like Ganni,’ she tried, ‘but that means he looks like me. He’s⁠—’

‘I don’t want a child who looks like you!’

She hadn’t been lying. Danjel was like a male version of her at the same age, and his features were showing no sign of changing. She suspected he lived in his imagination too, as she had in her youth, and she wondered what he dreamed of when he got that look in his eyes. She knew he didn’t like any hint of roughness or arguments. When Lawrenz sometimes pushed her up against the wall to make his angry point, she could see Danjel’s eyes widening… and more recently a sense of his hackles rising too. She could imagine a time when Danjel might try to do something about his father’s aggressive manner towards her. And she didn’t want that. It would only drive a deeper wedge between them or, worse, cause Danjel to get hurt.

The change in light as she mopped backwards out of the oratory drew her back to the present. She’d been in her head all of this time, and today’s work was done. She glanced up at the painting that dominated her life, and despite its grisly scene, she smiled at it.