"They were part of my life, always smiling: Giorgia was the sun, Monica the sea ." This morning, in the packed church of San Francesco in Pegli, Gabriele Fenu of San Vero Milis was also present, having arrived from Sardinia to attend the private funeral of university professor Monica Montefalcone and her daughter Giorgia Sommacal , who disappeared on May 14 in the Maldives while diving in a cave.

Monica was his childhood friend, whom he met in Mandriola when, as a child, she began frequenting the marina with her parents. But she was also his beloved companion: "Monica and her husband were my witnesses at my wedding," says Gabriele Fenu, "but she is also my daughter Sara's godmother."

It's a shock and a great pain for Gabriele to see those coffins today, one in dark wood for Monica and one in lighter wood for Giorgia. In the center, a photograph of mother and daughter together, with the sea in the background.

"I only saw Monica sad when, on the beach, the children pulled jellyfish out of the sea and buried them in the sand. She was summer. For me, however, now she's the sea: I'll see her again every time I dive into Mandriola. As well as Giorgia." Meanwhile, in Mandriola, the seaside village where Monica spent her summers from the age of one, her lifelong friends are trying to do something to remember her. She and her daughter Giorgia.

"Our idea," says Gianni Lutzu, a dear friend of the Sommacal family, "is to place a large sandstone boulder at Capo Mannu with a memorial plaque and a phrase dedicated to them ."

Capo Mannu, the place where Monica's husband, Carlo Sommacal, will scatter his wife's ashes when possible .