AFTER waving Julia goodbye, Lina went back to her bedroom to study for her Maths exam. But ideas for her story kept flitting into her head. I’ll just jot them down in case I forget them, she told herself, opening up her notebook, then I’ll study for Maths. But just as Lina began writing, her father poked his head around the door and Lina had to shove the notebook under her pillow.

‘Lina?’ he said. ‘Can you come back out to the kitchen for a moment? Your mother and I have some news we’d like to share with you.’

Oh no, Lina worried. Her first thought was that her mother might be pregnant. Lina couldn’t bear the thought of all those months of her getting more and more tired and more and more grumpy again. Or, even worse, losing the baby.

‘Don’t worry,’ Pa said, when he saw the look on his daughter’s face. ‘It’s good news, Lina. Very good news, in fact.’

Lina followed her father out to the kitchen. Her uncle and brothers were already there, sitting around the table, and Nonna stood at the stove, stirring the sauce. The windows had steamed up and the kitchen felt as snug and cosy as the cabin of a boat. Lina looked from face to face, searching for a clue, but no one in the room seemed to know any more than she did, except perhaps Ma. Her mother slipped her eyes away when Lina looked at her, a faint smile playing at the corner of her lips. Lina felt her stomach flip.

‘Children,’ Lina’s father began, taking his place at the head of the table. ‘Your mother and I have some exciting news for you.’ He took his wife’s hand and she looked up at him lovingly.

By now Lina’s belly was jumping about like a fish. ‘What? What?’ she blurted.

‘So impatient!’ Bruno teased, jabbing her in the arm.

Lina held back her yell so as not to prolong the wait any more than necessary.

‘Well,’ her father continued, his smile bigger than Lina had ever seen it, ‘you know how hard your mother and I have worked over the last few years?’

The children nodded. Boy, do we ever! Lina thought.

‘Well, all our hard work has finally paid off. The Gattusos are now proud owners of their very own home!’

Lina and her brothers all gasped, looked at each other in shock, then began firing questions at their parents one after the other.

‘Where is it?’

‘How big is it?’

‘How many bedrooms?’

‘Will I have my own room?’

‘How will I get to school?’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ Lina’s father said, laughing. ‘We will go and visit it soon so you can see it for yourselves. It’s not far from here, in Brunswick, but it’s big and it’s modern  . . .’

‘And it’s ours!’ Lina’s mother sighed, her eyes springing with tears.

Lina picked up Enzo and spun him around in the air. ‘A new house, Enzo! A new house of our very own!’

Enzo squealed loudly.

‘And just in time!’ Pierino joked, looking up at a crack in the kitchen ceiling that had been growing bigger and more ominous every day.

Ma rolled her eyes, nodding in agreement. ‘It can’t come soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. I have had it up to here with falling down old houses and lousy landlords who make no repairs and still put up the rent.’

‘Ahem!’ Zio said, frowning and rapping his fingers on the table.

‘We’re not finished,’ Lina’s father said, gesturing for them all to sit down again. ‘Zio has some happy news to share, too.’

Zio smiled and took a deep, proud breath. ‘I have a job.’ He held up his hand to calm all the excited clamouring that followed. ‘It’s not a great one,’ he shrugged, ‘but it’s good money. From next month I will be picking fruit in Mildura.’

‘Mildura?’ Lina said.

‘Up north,’ Zio explained. ‘In the country. Which means, sadly, I will not be moving into your big new house with you.’

Lina tried to look disappointed, but she wasn’t very successful. All she was able to think about was having a house where they could use their lounge room again!

Zio read her face and smiled, understandingly. ‘I know you will miss me,’ he joked, shooting a glance at Bruno in particular. ‘But you can always visit. The best part, though, is that now I have a job I can finally bring my wife out to Australia. She will be coming over in the new year, as soon as I’ve earned enough for a boat ticket.’

‘Oh, that’s fantastic!’ Lina gushed, this time sincerely. ‘When will we meet her?’

‘Mildura is a long way by train,’ Lina’s father said, ‘but we will make a trip to visit them next year. Maybe at Easter.’

‘And I will be back for Christmas,’ Zio grinned, ‘so I might need to borrow your couch for one more night.’

Lina smiled and hugged her uncle. Gosh! I might even miss him, she realised.

To celebrate their happy news, Lina’s father opened a bottle of homemade wine and sliced up some pieces of salami. He filled up glasses for all the adults and even the children had a splash of wine in water – the older they were, the bigger the splash.

‘Nonna!’ Pa sighed. ‘Stop working for a moment and come and join us, would you? It’s not every day your daughter’s husband and his brother have such tremendous news to celebrate.’

Despite grumbling about how they would already be eating late, Nonna turned off the sauce and joined them at the table. There, the whole family sat, drinking wine and chewing on hard little slices of salami and slippery olives, laughing and telling stories and imagining aloud all the excitement of their new lives, spilling out fresh and bright ahead of them, until the night had well and truly crept into the kitchen, enfolding them in its velvet cloak. The chickens weren’t put away and the goat was left to roam the garden. The Lygon Street trams ceased their rattling, the neighbours stopped yelling. Soon the narrow alleyway grew quiet. Only the Gattuso household rumbled with noisy happiness long into the night.