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street. The esplanade took on a lonely appearance. Up ahead of her Emma could see a group standing under a street light. She would have to pass them. She saw one of the group lift his head and stare at her. He motioned for the others to look. They all turned. Emma saw that there were about eight men, no women. She had been hoping for at least one woman. They started talking to her before she had reached them. She couldn’t understand what they were saying – her alarm bells were ringing and all she could focus on was finding another way home. She started to move off to the left. This was not clever. One of the men jogged across into her path.
    ‘Where you go?’ he asked in English.
    Emma turned away again, heading back from where she’d come. Another man was standing in her way.
    ‘ Bella , talk with us,’ said the first man, taking hold of her arm.

    Emma wrenched herself from his grip. ‘Fuck off!’
    ‘Oooh. Fuck off? Not so nice.’
    By now she was surrounded by the men, who ranged in age between late teens to mid-twenties. None of them was smiling. If anything, she thought they looked bored.
    ‘We walk you home, si ? Not safe,’ said the youngest of the group. He was smoking. One of the men took a photo of her with his phone. The flash surprised her and the others. There was some quick chatter and then a burst of ugly laughter that made Emma’s blood run cold.
    ‘We take you home. We talk. You like us. Not bad boys. I am Maurizio,’ said the first man, smiling. He tried to lean in to kiss her on both cheeks. Emma pulled back and Maurizio’s smile vanished.
    ‘Come for a drink,’ said the boy, taking her arm again. ‘We nice boys.’
    Emma heard a scooter coming down the road beside the esplanade. She wriggled free and ran into its path. The bike slowed and came to a stop.
    ‘Marco, come stai ?’ shouted the boy to the man on the bike.
    Marco took one look at Emma and one look at the group. He needed no further information.He motioned for her to get on and Emma didn’t hesitate. Marco had kind eyes. He was at least thirty. Her options were limited. She threw her leg over the bike, gripped him around the waist and without a word they were off.
    Emma had been too panicked to notice where they were going, but within moments of leaving the men Marco brought the bike to a stop. He had pulled up outside her building.
    She stepped off the bike, unnerved again by this new and strange turn of events. ‘How did you know where I live?’ she asked.
    He was looking at her with a warm smile. ‘Otranto. Everybody know everybody,’ he said. ‘You OK?’
    Emma nodded.
    ‘ Bene. Ciao .’
    And with that he was gone.

    The next few days were strange for Emma. She was emerging from a fog. She had become so self-absorbed. She hadn’t thought of Otranto as a small town but now she was noticing the same faces again and again throughout her day. The tourists entered the streets and distractedthe eye; they had given her a sense that the town was bigger than it was. In the day the town bulged with a transient population. But if you stood still you could see others doing the same. The shopkeepers, the men on the docks, the fishermen, the guards outside the bank, the priests, the cleaners, the professional men and women coming and going from buildings with bronze plates by their street doors. These people remained when the buses left and the last train to Brindisi rolled out of the station.
    She even saw Maurizio, her would-be attacker, sitting with a girl on his lap on the wall outside the castle. He nodded to her as she passed. The girl turned to see who he was nodding to. She gave Emma a filthy look and then turned back to harangue her beau.
    And then there was Marco. Suddenly, a man she had not laid eyes before was everywhere. She saw him entering a deli. She watched him drive by Sylvia’s shop on his scooter. He was sitting with friends at a café table on the esplanade. He saw her each time too. His eyes were calm,