★In a race against time, Paola Barbato takes us into the abyss of the mind, where fear, passion and obsession are inex

Two years have gone by and nothing remains of what there once was. Lena was brilliant, determined, everyone said how great she was – she looked after herself, she was kind-hearted. Then Saverio came into her life and everything was turned upside down. The younger man, who opposed all rules, prejudice and conformity, changed her completely. Not only her clothes, her hairstyle, the way she spoke. It was her very self, her confidence and self-esteem. All crushed for the sake of a love that everyone saw as existing in her imagination only. The day he ended up in the river Arno, first declared missing and then dead, the spark finally went out in Lena’s life.

Two years have gone by and all that’s left to her of Saverio is his dog, Argo, who still sees her as a usurper, and a sense of irremediable and painful emptiness. The evening she finds a mobile phone in her letterbox, Lena thinks it’s a joke or a mistake. It only takes her a few minutes to realize that the object might change her life. Because the messages that arrive, and to which she cannot reply, mention things only Saverio could know. So he’s alive. He’s come back. This is how, without her realizing it, the little device becomes the sole life blood she feeds on and it doesn’t matter how imperative the messages are, ordering her to do things she would never have thought herself capable of. Because if she obeys, he will come back into her life. At least that’s what she thinks. At least up until the people around her start dying. The game gets crueller and crueller. And the next chosen victim could be her.

In a race against time, Paola Barbato takes us into the abyss of the mind, where fear, passion and obsession are inextricably bound up and, at times, strangle us.

Paola Barbato, born 1971, is a native Milanese, later adopting Brescia and on loan to Verona, where she lives with her companion, three daughters and three dogs. An author and strip-cartoon writer, including texts for Dylan Dog, she has published Bilico (Balance), Mani nude (Bare-handed) (winner of the Scerbanenco Award), Il filo rosso (The Red Thread), Non ti faccio niente (I Won’t Hurt You) and Io so chi sei (I Know Who You Are). She wrote and co-authored the fiction Nel nome del male (In the Name of Evil), with Fabrizio Bentivoglio, for Filmmaster.