Stevie felt a thrill of excitement. As the ferry approached the small port of Amalfi, the tight jumble of bleached white houses with their terracotta roofs looked every inch as beautiful as she remembered. They seemed to be stacked up the side of the mountain like wonderful wedding cakes and as the azure blue of the Mediterranean sparkled like a jewelled sea in the afternoon sunlight, Stevie had to resist the urge to whip out her sketchbook right away, but she stopped herself; there’d be time for that in the next few days.
As she stepped off the boat, along with a collection of day-trippers, holidaymakers and a few locals on their return journey from Salerno, Stevie congratulated herself on making it here at all. It would have been easy to finish the trip in Naples after her best friend and travelling companion, Joanne, had been forced to cut short her trip and travel back to England.
Her beloved elderly father, living in sheltered housing, had
