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Emotion bubbles up in me. I could weep, or laugh – I’m just so bloody relieved. ‘It’s okay,’ I say, compelled to defend her now I know the threat is past. ‘She hasn’t known me that long, and you’re her friend. She’s bound to be protective of you. And besides…’ I stop myself before I can say that he hasn’t known me that long either; that he could perfectly well have believed her. But Marco seems to pick up on my thought, because he loosens his grip on me and steps back, fixing me with serious dark eyes.
‘I know you,’ he says. ‘I know you, and I trust you, and I… I’m happy you’re here.’
‘I’m happy, too,’ I say.
For a long moment we just look at each other, grinning like fools. Then Marco clears his throat. ‘Well, we have a few things to celebrate. Where shall I take you this evening?’
I wrap my arms around him and reach up to kiss him. ‘I think,’ I say, ‘I’d rather stay in and order pizza.’
32
‘Achille didn’t listen,’ Stella says. She’s told me to call her Stella, because it’s her old life we’re here to discuss. ‘I begged him not to interfere. I told him it would only make things worse. But it was impossible. Once Achille saw that something was unfair, he simply couldn’t let it stand. And the way my parents were treating me was very unfair. So he went and told some home truths to my father. And, exactly as I predicted, my father didn’t shout back at Achille or hit him or punish him. He was angry with me – both he and my mother were. I had ruined their relationship with their darling boy. I was the problem. It was all just as I knew it would be.’
She smooths out the blanket across her knees, fiddling with the fringe. My mind’s racing with a thousand questions, but something tells me to stay quiet and so I do.
We’re sitting on the terrace of Stella’s house, which stands alone on a hilltop a little way south of Florence. I took a train and two buses to get here and I still struggled to walk the last stretch: a winding stony path so steep that I wonder how Stella’s little Fiat can survive the ascent.
There’s a whining, creaking sound and an elderly Chihuahua toddles out through the open French doors towards us, blinking in the sun. ‘Come on, Diego,’ Stella coos, her face soft with love, and she leans down and scoops the little dog into her lap. Diego turns a baleful, bug-eyed stare on me and wrinkles his lip in a desultory way.
‘My guard dog,’ Stella says.
‘He’s lovely,’ I say, and Diego gives me a filthy look before curling up with his back to me.
‘Maleducato,’ Stella says in mock reproach. ‘Now, what was I talking about?’
‘About Achille and your parents,’ I prompt her.
‘Yes. Well, the atmosphere became unbearable after that. My father was openly hostile, and my mother would cry and sulk and say… oh, awful things, vicious things. Worse than I’d heard from Enzo – worse than I’d heard from anybody. And Achille wouldn’t let it rest. He kept on at both of them like a terrier after a rat – and the more he worried at them, the more they punished me, and so it went on and on. The Germans surrendered, the war ended, and my parents just kept going. I’d already decided that I would leave Romituzzo one day, but now the situation was becoming urgent. I couldn’t live in that house any longer. You do understand that?’
Her vehemence takes me aback. ‘Of course,’ I say.
‘I came to that decision quite alone. I think that I would have run off to a convent, or gone to Florence to try and find work there. Anything, anything to get away. But then, as it happened, I saw Davide in town one day late that summer. We didn’t seek each other out, he and I, but if we happened to meet then we would make some time to talk. I expect people think we did much more than talk.’
‘I suspect so,’ I say, thinking of Cecco.
‘But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a romantic bond Davide and I had. It was something much more important.’ She’s staring out across the valley. ‘He understood. He was perhaps the only person in my life who treated me like a real comrade, except for don Anselmo. And don Anselmo had left. He managed to hang on until the very end of the war, until the first of May – the very first May Day celebrations of my life, and my sixteenth birthday – and then… well, he was gone and there was this rather horse-faced young priest in his place. And he never did say goodbye, even though he promised he would. After a while I came to understand that it was probably the best thing for him. He was so very unwell by then and he needed to look after himself, to do whatever was right. But at the time I didn’t understand at all. I felt betrayed.’
Stella falls silent again. In her lap, Diego rolls over with a grunt, exposing his belly for her to scratch.
‘Little pig,’ she says distractedly as she ruffles his fur. I watch her, resisting the temptation to reach for my phone and double-check that it’s recording. I have a feeling that telling this story is costing her; that she won’t tell it again.
‘So I saw Davide,’ she says at last. ‘And he had this letter from his cousin Giampiero. Giampiero had been in the army, you see, fighting in Yugoslavia when Italy was still on Germany’s side. But he’d deserted to join Tito’s partisans, and now the war was over he was going to stay there. And Davide told me that he was going to go, too.’
‘To Yugoslavia?’
‘Yes. In a way, it was a natural choice. Davide was a communist but he hated Stalin, and he hated how Togliatti – that was the head of the Italian Communist Party – well, he did what Stalin told him. Davide believed that Marshal Tito was building a new revolution: a revolution from below. It seems strange now, but it’s what many people believed at the time. Achille believed it, and Enzo – all the members of their group did. If I had been a communist, I would probably have believed it too.’
‘But you weren’t a communist,’ I say.
Stella shakes her head. ‘I wasn’t, no. I had a lot of sympathy with the communists – the good ones, like Achille and Davide – but I didn’t have faith in Marshal Tito like they did. And, ultimately, I was right. But in that instant…’ She breaks off, and for just a moment she looks like that lost, wounded teenage girl. ‘Davide was so excited about going. And he told me that if I were to come with him, then we could keep working together. There would be plenty for us to do. And I could train to be a teacher if I wanted, or even a doctor. I had a gift for medicine, he said, and I’d have so much more freedom in big, cosmopolitan Belgrade than I would in provincial little Romituzzo. He told me so many things and promised me so much, but all I knew was that this boy – the one person in the whole world who was left to me – was giving me a way out, the chance to build a new life. So I didn’t think about it, didn’t ask myself if I really wanted to go and work for Tito’s revolution. I agreed to go right away.
‘The moment I said yes, the wheels were in motion. Davide soon got it all sorted out. He got us false papers that made it look as if we were from Trieste, on the Yugoslav border. We’d have to keep our mouths shut while travelling, of course, because a Tuscan accent sounds like nothing else on earth. It’s unmistakable. And we’d have to leave in secret so nobody could hold us back. Davide’s family would understand, he said, but Lucia wouldn’t. She’d have tried to stop him and blown our cover in the process. As for my parents…’ She sighs. ‘They had Achille, and that was all they wanted. They were so hostile to me, why shouldn’t I leave? The only person I felt bad for in that moment was Achille himself. I knew he’d be hurt – I knew he’d miss me. But I had to save myself. I couldn’t afford to worry about his feelings.’
‘Maybe you needed to get away from him, too,’ I say.
Stella nods. ‘I think so.’
‘So you and Davide set off.’
