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‘Got back this morning. Seems like the SS didn’t hang around – not much for them to check in a place of this size, and every man under eighty had made himself scarce. And it’s the men they want. Mamma says they weren’t here more than a few minutes.’
‘They came into the house?’
‘They even came in here to look at you,’ Achille said. ‘You were out for the count, Mamma says. Probably just as well.’
I pulled the covers up around my neck. I was glad I hadn’t had to see the Germans looking at me. ‘Where’s Enzo? And Sandro?’ I added hastily. ‘Did they go to Santa Marta with you?’
‘Of course. Not that there was much to do up there, in the end – we just sat tight and waited for word that the Germans had gone. Sandro came back down with me, but Enzo decided to stay on. I thought about it too, but I’m probably more useful here.’ Achille shrugged. ‘Still, I envy him. He’s going to see some real action.’
I couldn’t speak. My throat was clogged and there was a pain deep within me because the boy I cared for – the very first one to hold my hand, to kiss me, to give me cause to dream – had left without saying goodbye. And who knew if I’d see him again?
‘I’ll have to break it to Papà,’ Achille went on. ‘He had no idea Enzo was a communist. Oh, Stellina, don’t look so worried. Enzo’s a crack shot. Nobody’s going to get past him, believe me.’
I couldn’t bear his kindness. ‘It isn’t that,’ I said. ‘I’m glad he’s staying. I just… I wish I could be useful. I should be out working, not lying in bed.’
Achille rubbed my arm. ‘Don’t worry about that. You’ll be fit again in no time. In the meantime, I passed a message along to Agnese.’ Agnese was the woman who had taken over Berta’s organising duties. ‘She knows you’re sick and will have plenty for you to do when you’re ready. But you have to recover properly first, all right? We need you to be strong.’
‘All right,’ I said.
‘Will I let Mamma know you’re awake? She probably wants to make you eat soup.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I can face it. Not yet.’
‘Understandable.’ Achille leaned forward to plant a kiss on my forehead. ‘Rest well, little sister.’ He got up and went out, closing the door softly behind him. I buried my face in my pillow and cried in heaving, broken sobs, like a little girl. I couldn’t imagine my life without Enzo close at hand. I didn’t know how I would manage.
*
I did manage, of course. A few days later I was back on my feet, and there was so much to do that I simply had to get on and do it. The war was growing more and more intense, and we felt it in Romituzzo, too. Not just in the concrete sense – the train lines blown up and the power cables sabotaged, the troops at the stations, the diktats posted up on walls and doors with their sordid refrain ofwill be punished by death– but in the news that filtered back to our little town by word of mouth and in the clandestine press. A partisan lad captured by Fascists, doused with petrol and burned alive. A pregnant young courier imprisoned and tortured; a woman shot as she tried to pull her husband from the back of a truck. A Jewish family hidden by one neighbour, their location betrayed to the SS by another. These stories were commonplace.
Once, walking out of Castelmedici station with my satchel full of ammunition, I saw bodies hanging from the trees that lined the square. Two men and two women, all of them young, in mismatched and scruffy clothing. Around each of their necks was a handwritten sign that said, in angry black letters,PARTISAN. At their feet, German soldiers held back the mourners who were gathering.
‘Just give me my daughter,’ I heard a woman cry out as I hurried past, my head down. ‘You’ve made your point, now let me bury her.’ One of the soldiers made a jabbing motion with the butt of his rifle and the little knot of women surged together, muttering. If I had not been a partisan already, I would have become one in that moment.
The months that followed were the busiest time of my life so far. Alongside my work with the women’s network, I also helped don Anselmo. Sometimes he wanted me to pick up food or medicine from a friendly shopkeeper. Sometimes he would ask me to collect or return a book in Castelmedici or San Damiano, ‘but only if you happen to be going’. Sometimes he’d send me on an errand for don Mauro, or ask me to pass him a note when I next went by St Catherine’s. I always said yes and I never asked to know why. It was enough that I knew about the weapons in the tunnel.
There were days when I stayed out from dawn until curfew, but it never caused a problem at home. I always managed my chores, even if I had to get up in the dark to do them. Enzo was gone and Achille was more in demand than ever before, so my father had to run the garage on his own. My mother haunted the house, waiting for her son to return. She didn’t care what I did.
At first, I used to ask Achille for news of Enzo whenever he came back from Santa Marta. Obviously he couldn’t give me any details, but he would reassure me that he was alive and well and had asked about me, too – I don’t know whether that last part was true every time, or even at all. Achille was a good brother. Sometimes he’d even take a short message to Enzo for me, written on the cigarette paper we all used. Sometimes I’d receive a short message back. But then the replies stopped coming altogether, and I stopped writing. After a while, I no longer asked for news.
11
Tori
‘Now, I’m afraid we have to talk about money,’ Ambra Kurti says. She’s a young, serious woman in a dark grey suit and pearls, her black hair pulled into a chignon. From her office window I can see a glimpse of the Royal Mile. ‘Can you give me an idea of how the finances worked in your household?’
I didn’t expect to get into this on the first video call, and I haven’t prepared. I hesitate and Ambra smiles. ‘Don’t worry about precise details,’ she says. ‘If you proceed with the divorce, then you’ll both be filling out financial disclosures. But anything you can tell me at this stage is useful, just to get an overview.’
‘Well, basically we had a joint account for all the day-to-day stuff,’ I say. ‘My freelance earnings went in there.’
‘And how much would that be?’ Ambra asks. ‘Last tax year, what did you earn?’
‘Oh. Well, I haven’t started doing my tax return yet. But I had a regular writing gig that brought in £250 per month, as a baseline, and of course I took whatever work I could on top of that. I probably earned about… fourteen, fifteen thousand last year? Plus the first half of my book advance, which was another five. Obviously that was a bit of an anomaly.’
Ambra nods, noting it all down. ‘Right. And presumably Duncan had some money going into that account, too?’
‘He’d put in three hundred pounds each month. We agreed on that number when we got married, back in 2008. It was about equivalent to my writing income at the time,’ I explain. ‘That way we’d be contributing equally to costs, at least in theory. Obviously, he still had to cover most of the outgoings for the first couple of years.’
‘Right. So your contributions to the joint account increased quite substantially from 2008. But his didn’t?’ I shake my head and she makes a note. ‘So he’s been paying in a lot less than you, even without the advance,’ she says. ‘And, of course, the cost of living has gone up considerably.’
