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PROLOGUE
‘ALICIA,HAVEYOUbeen telling fibs again?’
‘I don’t think so...’
Alicia frowned as she and Beatrice made their way along the private path that led from their tiny school and their residence towards the convent. Even half running it was a good ten minutes along the rugged coastal headlands of Trebordi in Sicily’s south.
‘Maybe a few white lies...’ Alicia admitted, deciding that it might be safer just to apologise in advance. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve got us into trouble.’
‘Again,’ Beatrice scolded. ‘It is hard work being your twin sometimes.’
And, although she was being told off just a little, Beatrice’s words made Alicia’s heart soar because—well, it made them family.
Even if technically they weren’t.
They had arrived at the baby door of the convent within a few weeks of each other and had been fondly referred to as twins at first. Though others had long since stopped, between them the term had remained.
In days gone by the baby door had been used regularly. Its use was rare now, but a benefactor ensured that it remained open. Baby girls dropped off at the convent, if not adopted, lived in the private house and were given a free education at the school in the convent grounds. Baby boys were cared for in the same residence up until the age of one, unless adopted.
‘It’s lucky we’re girls,’ Beatrice would say. ‘It’s such a good school. At least...’ Beatrice would wrinkle her nose, ‘...compared to the one in town.’
‘Well, I wish I’d been born a boy,’ Alicia would say, and sigh, because she hated school and ached for a family with something akin to hunger. A desperate, insatiable hunger. ‘But then, if I were a boy,’ she would say with a smile to Beatrice, ‘I wouldn’t have you.’
Though they were not actually twins, nor even biological sisters, Alicia preferred to think of them that way, and would introduce them as such to any doubtful tourists who might make the trek along the headlands to the nunnery and stop to make a purchase from the produce shop.
‘Twins?’ They would frown dubiously, for Alicia and Beatrice could not be more different in either appearance or nature.
‘Yes,’ Alicia would say as she wrapped their parcels. ‘Though not identical, of course. Our parents died in a house fire. Mamma passed us out of the window to the firefighters. It was the last thing she did,’ she would add with a wistful sigh.
‘Alicia Domenica!’ Sister Angelique rarely spoke, but when she did it was to tell off Alicia, or report her to Reverend Mother, who would scold her for her fanciful tales. ‘Why on earth would you say such a thing?’
Alicia’s answer was always simple. ‘Because it sounds so much nicer than saying we were abandoned.’
It sounded as if they had once been loved.
Alicia had arrived at the convent first, early one September. A feisty and very Sicilian baby with curly black hair and blue eyes which would quickly darken to a deep brown.
The nuns had guessed she was a week or so old, for her cord had been a shrivelled stub, which meant that—for a little while—she had been cared for and loved. She had been bathed and dressed before being left, and there had been a pair of Italian gold hoops pinned to the little baby suit she wore. Despite appearing well nourished she had seemingly arrived hungry—grabbing at the bottle and sucking greedily, then grabbing a finger and clutching on—although the nuns had soon found out that was just her nature. She was frantic not just for milk but for attention. Wanting more, ever more, of any brief taste of love...
They had named her Alicia after the nun who had found her. And she had been given the surname Domenica for she had arrived on a Sunday.
Then, three weeks later, deep in the night, the bell had rung again, alerting the nuns that the baby door had been used. This time around there had been barely a cry, and the babe had been fragile and skinny. She’d still been covered in vernix and the cord had been crudely tied off, meaning the infant was likely just a matter of hours old.
This baby had been as blonde as Alicia was dark, and so silent in comparison that the nuns had been worried. So worried that, despite it being late summer, they had lit the old wood stove in the kitchen and, after feeding and wrapping her, had put her in the same crib as Alicia for extra warmth.
A mistake, perhaps, for after that Alicia had sobbed loudly whenever they were parted.
She had been named Beatrice Festa. Beatrice after the nun who had found her, and Festa for the festival that had been taking place in town when she’d arrived, and they were rather sure she had come from there. Still, it had soon been decided that she was misnamed, for Beatrice meant bringer of happiness, andfestaswere fun, yet she was an unsmiling, serious little thing.
Alicia loved her so very much, though—even when she was prim and cross and attempting to communicate to her the trouble they were in.
‘Have you been swimming with Dante Schininà in the river again?’ Beatrice asked.
‘No!’ Alicia was telling the truth. ‘Ragno wouldn’t come—he says he’s too old for all that. Anyway, the water is getting too low.’ She called himragno, meaning spider, because he was tall and skinny and all arms and legs.
‘Thank goodness.’ Beatrice tutted. ‘Or we really would be in trouble.’
‘For swimming?’
