Chapter 1: The Last Ferry

Mara reached the pier at ten past six, which was nine minutes after the last ferry had left. She stood at the rail with her suitcase between her feet and watched its lights get smaller across the grey water.

"There's another one at seven tomorrow," said the man in the ticket booth. He did not look up from his newspaper. "Unless the wind picks up. Then there isn't."

She asked whether there was a hotel nearby. He pointed with his pen at a three-storey building on the corner, its sign missing two letters, and went back to the crossword.

The room cost forty-two euros and smelled of salt and old carpet. Mara opened the window, set her grandmother's letter on the bedside table, and read it again, although she had read it so many times on the train that she could recite most of it.

Chapter 2: The Letter

The letter was short. Her grandmother had written it in pencil, in the careful, slightly old-fashioned hand she had learned at a convent school, and had underlined only one sentence.

My dear Mara,
The key is under the blue pot.
Do not let your uncle sell the boat.
With love, always,
Nonna

Mara had never met her uncle. She knew three things about him: that he lived on the island, that he had not come to the funeral, and that her mother would not say his name.

* * *

In the morning the wind had not picked up. The ferry was half empty: a delivery van, two cyclists in matching jackets, and an old woman with a cage of chickens who talked to them in a dialect Mara could follow only half of. She bought a coffee from the machine, which gave her tea instead, and drank it anyway.

Chapter 3: The Blue Pot

The house was smaller than she remembered from the photographs. Somebody had cut the grass recently, and the shutters had been painted, not well, but not long ago either.

There were four pots by the door. Two were terracotta, one was white, and one was a faded blue that might once have been green. Mara tipped it toward her and found nothing underneath but a woodlouse and a ring of damp earth.

"If you are looking for the key," said a voice behind her, "I moved it."