Rosa’s hours at the Dead, Wounded and Missing section were from eight o’clock in the morning until lunchtime. But there was so much to do that she frequently returned in the afternoon and worked until the evening. Her most difficult task was when the cases of deceased soldiers’ belongings arrived and she had to pack them, along with a translation of the hospital chaplain’s note, before sending them to the family. Occasionally a uniform was included, sometimes mud-caked and stiff with blood, but most often the items returned were Bibles and photographs. Rosa sometimes found notebooks, decks of cards, sheet music, rosaries and sketches. There were never compasses or binoculars unless they were broken; those were in short supply back on the battlefield. When Rosa touched the objects, visions and feelings flew through her. She saw the soldier on his wedding day, as a child in his mother’s arms, running across a battlefield with cracks of gunfire in his ears. More than she liked, Rosa experienced their feelings at the moment of death: resignation, or cold, stark fear—like the hunted animals she sensed when she touched fur or skin. When the soldiers had died in a hospital rather than on the battlefield there were often feelings of relief or regret.
Whenever she considered it appropriate, she included a note of her own along with the official letter: a verse from a poem she thought might bring comfort or a quote from the Bible. Sometimes the soldier’s death had been so tragic, the only thing she could think of to send was a pressed flower. By the end of each day she was drained, and yet somehow the following morning she found the strength to return to the section, ready to spend another day doing whatever small act she could to alleviate a woman’s pain.
Some of the packages contained letters written by the soldiers to their families that had never been sent. Rosa was required to read them in case anything had slipped by the censor—quite often things had, whether by accident or on purpose. She learned more about the progress of the war from the correspondence of the deceased than she did from the censored press. She pieced together a war where Italian soldiers were being slaughtered because the army was badly equipped. We don’t have trucks to transport us, penned one soldier. We carry our supplies on mules. A young officer wrote to his father that only two of his men understood Italian. When he ordered them to fight, the order had to be translated into several regional dialects.
It became the habit of Rosa and Signora Corvetto to sit together at the end of the day and unload their burdens to each other over a cup of tea.
‘One widow has been coming to me for months for news of her son,’ said Signora Corvetto one evening. ‘She has cancer. Today I found out that he was killed in Greece. He’s her only child.’
Rosa had thought all the tragic stories would make her numb after a while. But she never stopped feeling the terrible things that were happening.
‘Italy wasn’t prepared at all for this war, was it?’ she asked.
Signora Corvetto threw up her hands. ‘We are an agricultural country,’ she said. ‘We never had France’s or Germany’s industrial capacity. We can’t produce planes, tanks or automobiles as fast as they can. At harvest time, the Italian army had to send the conscripts back to bring in the crops otherwise the army as well as the civilians would have starved.’ She poured them both another cup of tea. ‘My late husband owned a merchant shipping fleet. No-one informed his company that Italy was about to enter the war. So when the declaration was made, the ships docked in Allied ports were immediately impounded. Those ships could have been used in the war effort. Instead, they are being used against us.’
Signora Corvetto glanced at the world map on the wall. Rosa followed her gaze to the outline of Africa. It was the one place that Italy had experienced some success. Everywhere else the war was a disaster.
‘Italy is going to have to surrender,’ said Signora Corvetto. ‘There is no other way out of this.’
‘Surrender?’ A shudder ran down Rosa’s spine. ‘I’ve never believed Italy had a good reason for entering this war. But if we surrender what will the Allies do to us?’
Signora Corvetto bit her lip. ‘I don’t know.’ She indicated the files scattered on her desk and the new crate of returned belongings that had arrived that day. ‘But could it be worse than this?’
Rosa and Antonio had hoped to visit the children for Christmas. But, as Rosa had feared, as soon as the government official at the passport office reviewed her documents, he refused her request.
‘Please,’ she begged him. ‘My children are very young. I haven’t seen them for months.’
‘Why did you send them to Switzerland?’ the official asked her.
‘So they would be safe.’
The official’s eyes narrowed. ‘Well,’ he said, loudly enough for the people in the waiting area to hear, ‘you obviously doubted Italy would win this war, so you are two times the traitor.’
He slammed down the shutter on his window and put up his ‘closed’ sign. It was still a quarter of an hour before lunchtime.
Rosa turned to leave. The people in the waiting area stared at her. Rosa remembered the times she had suffered public humiliation for being an unwed mother. But on this occasion she looked each of the people in the face.
‘Was I wrong?’ she asked them. ‘Are we on our way to glorious victory?’
The onlookers averted their eyes. Rosa’s subversive comment could incriminate them all, but she suspected that there was a stronger feeling prevailing among them than fear. They knew what she said was right and they were ashamed.
Rosa and Antonio argued that evening over whether he should go to Lugano without her.
‘The children will feel abandoned if you don’t go,’ Rosa said. ‘And I want you to see personally how they are.’
‘Perhaps it’s time to get that false passport,’ suggested Antonio.
Rosa shook her head. ‘That’s one risk we will keep for when we know we are leaving and not coming back,’ she replied. ‘People are still buying from the shop. There seems to be a certain class of Florentine that doesn’t realise there is a war on.’
Antonio nodded. ‘The city does seem oddly safe. Perhaps the Allies are as sentimental about the birthplace of the Renaissance as we are.’
Rosa hid her heartbreak at not being able to visit her children by busying herself sewing clothes for them. She wrote each of them a long letter, asking Sibilla to read the one for the twins to them. I’m so proud of you, my darling, amazing and lovely girl, she wrote to Sibilla. I hope you know that although I can’t see you, I carry you and the boys in my heart always.
Rosa wrote to Lorenzo and Giorgio about happy things—the change in the seasons, what Ylenia was cooking for them, what the neighbours were doing. But all her feelings could have been summed up in three simple words: I miss you. It hurt her to think of all the special moments with her children that she had been deprived of and could never have back again. She only hoped that when they were older the children would understand why she had been unable to see them and forgive her.
The night before Antonio was due to leave, Ylenia made them polenta with nettles and wild mushrooms. She’d had to piece together what she could from the rations, and Rosa refused to eat hedgehogs or guinea pigs. But they ate on their finest china and drank a bottle of the French champagne they had ‘subversively’ kept for a special occasion.
When they had finished dinner, Antonio leaned back in his chair and touched the rim of his glass. ‘Do you ever think about him?’ he asked.
‘Who?’ responded Rosa, looking up. Antonio had an unfamiliar expression on his face and she realised that he had meant Luciano. Antonio had never been the jealous type. Why was he bringing Luciano up now? She lowered her eyes. ‘He’s dead, Antonio. No-one has heard from Luciano since Spain. He would have contacted Orietta or Carlo if he were still alive. Yes, I think of him when I light my candle in the church, but I don’t think of him the same way I once did. I pray to God every day that I may have half his courage and determination.’
Ylenia came in with some dried figs for dessert. When the maid left, Rosa asked Antonio, ‘Do you still think of her?’ She meant Signora Visconti.
It was Antonio’s turn to be surprised. He shifted in his seat then looked Rosa in the eye. ‘Every day. Every day I think of her.’
Rosa felt herself pale. She knew that Signora Visconti had been the love of Antonio’s life, but ever since they had last seen her on the Day of Faith, Rosa had hoped that he’d forgotten her. It was a shock to hear from his own mouth that he hadn’t.
‘I see,’ she said, trying to disguise her hurt feelings by holding Antonio’s gaze. ‘I guess she is rather unforgettable.’
‘Exactly!’ said Antonio, a smile dancing on his lips ‘That is why I remember her every day when I see you and think, Thank God I married Rosa!’
It took Rosa a moment to comprehend Antonio’s meaning. When she understood, she blushed with embarrassment but felt happy too. ‘It’s not nice to tease your wife that way!’ she said, affecting an irritated tone.
Antonio stood up and placed his hand on Rosa’s shoulder. ‘Then suggest a nicer way for me to tease my wife?’ he said.
In January 1941, the British launched an attack against the Italian strongholds in East Africa. After Keren fell, so did Asmara and Massawa. The Ethiopian capital was captured by the British. The Italian casualties were heavy. The Red Cross rounded up more volunteers for the Dead, Wounded and Missing section to help with the workload of informing relatives about the fate of their sons and husbands.
Rosa arrived one morning with the lists from the army telegraph office. She felt the unsettling presence around her that she experienced whenever she was reminded of the Villa Scarfiotti. Only she hadn’t been thinking of the villa at all; rather, she had been disturbed to learn by letter from Antonio that the twins had colds. Still that presence was there—breathing, rippling and moving the air around her. The sensation grew stronger when she walked into Signora Corvetto’s office to find the head of the section slumped over her desk and weeping. It was the first time Rosa had seen Signora Corvetto give way to her emotions but she understood. All the volunteers in the section were burnt out. Rosa was starting to see the faces of the women in the waiting room in her sleep. A human being could only deal with so much grief.
‘I’ll make you a cup of tea with sugar,’ she said to Signora Corvetto. ‘You’re trembling.’
Signora Corvetto looked up. She had changed from a fresh-faced beauty to an old woman overnight. There were shadows under her eyes and grooves around her mouth. ‘The list,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Give me the list.’
‘The list can wait another five minutes,’ Rosa told her. ‘You can’t help anybody if you aren’t feeling well.’
Signora Corvetto sat back in her chair. ‘He hasn’t written,’ she said, touching her fingers to her brow. ‘Why hasn’t he written?’
She was repeating the same lament Rosa heard every day from the women in the waiting room. For a moment she wondered if Signora Corvetto was suffering a breakdown. Then she remembered that the Marchese Scarfiotti was in Africa. ‘I’ve already scanned the list,’ Rosa told her. ‘His name is not there.’
Signora Corvetto placed her hands on the desk as if she were trying to steady herself. Rosa pulled up a chair and sat beside her. She thought about all the women Signora Corvetto had comforted. Who would be there for Signora Corvetto now that she needed support?
‘You have worked yourself into the ground,’ Rosa told her. ‘You know that you might not hear anything for months. There is no way that anything other than priority war correspondence will get through now.’
Signora Corvetto opened the desk drawer and took out a handkerchief from the plentiful supply she kept there. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘When Rodolfo passed away, I thought Emilio and I could see more of each other,’ she said, looking into the distance. ‘We were happy together.’ She lost her composure again and gave way to a new wave of tears. ‘This damn war!’ she cried. ‘This damn war!’
‘If he’s not been on any of the lists so far, then that’s a good sign,’ Rosa said. ‘Those in command are the first to be noticed missing.’ But she was clutching at straws. Both she and Signora Corvetto knew that not being on the list did not necessarily mean a soldier wasn’t dead. The Marchese and his unit could have been blown to bits, identity discs and all, and then no-one would know what had happened for months, maybe never.
That evening at church, while lighting her candle for the anti-fascists, Rosa said a prayer for the Marchese Scarfiotti as well. She had not been particularly fond of him, but two people she cared about were suffering over him. If Signora Corvetto was feeling the anxiety of not having heard any news, then Clementina must be in torment too. Rosa had tried to shut Clementina out of her mind for many years and lavish all her love and attention on her own children. But now her heart was breaking for Clementina.
One morning in early summer, long after Antonio had returned from his visit to Lugano, Signora Corvetto was called away to a meeting of the heads of the Red Cross volunteer divisions. Rosa and two of the new volunteers, an elderly couple by the name of Daria and Fabrizio Bianchi, sat at the front desk together. They were checking letters to be forwarded to Italian prisoners of war when the hospital librarian arrived with a box.
‘This was sent to us by mistake,’ he said. ‘I thought it was some new books so I didn’t look at it until now. But it’s for your section. It’s the belongings of a commanding officer.’
The Bianchis turned to Rosa; she dealt with the belongings to be returned because she could translate the Allied chaplain’s notes. She stood up and took the box from the librarian. As soon as she touched it her heart plunged. The Marchese Scarfiotti is dead, she thought. Without even having to look at the contents she knew that they belonged to him.
‘Excuse me,’ she said to the volunteers. She took the box to Signora Corvetto’s office and closed the door.
When she took the package out of the box and placed it on the desk she felt as if she had slipped away from time. She untied the string and opened the brown paper. Her fingers brushed the light grey cordellino uniform and what she had suspected was confirmed. She saw the Marchese as a boy playing in the garden at the Villa Scarfiotti. He was not the Marchese that Rosa had known because his gait was carefree and no shadows stalked him. The accompanying official letter said the Marchese had been killed on 15 March that year while defending the Sanchil Peak. Rosa gazed at the uniform to see if she could ascertain the Marchese’s feelings when he died. She sensed light and sound fading. His death had been quick. He hadn’t had time to think, although she felt fatalism in his last breath. She had the impression that he was at rest but, unknown to Signora Corvetto and Clementina, he had not wanted to stay in this world for a long time. He’d not found the courage to leave it until that final battle.
Rosa recalled Clementina’s ninth birthday party. She remembered the arrival of Bonnie Lass and the delight on Clementina’s face when she rode the pony with her father leading her. Rosa shook her head. The war was not some freak of nature. It was motivated by human greed and fear and that made it all the more tragic. She opened her notebook to record the contents of the package: there were no unsent letters, nor was there a wedding band or a Bible. However, there was the signet ring that the Marchese had worn the day he came to the convent and a silver-topped clothes brush. The Marchese’s engraved map case had been included, although the Allied officials had removed the maps. Under the case was a book. Rosa picked it up and found it was a copy of Dante’s La divina comedia. She opened it. On the title page there was a dedication from Nerezza. When Rosa saw the bold handwriting, the strange foreboding feeling returned to her.
For words that are yet to be said and for days that are yet to be lived it read. It was dated 12 October 1906. Perhaps it was a birthday gift.
Rosa was about to put down the book when she realised there were photographs wedged between some of the pages. The first was a portrait of Signora Corvetto. She looked beautiful with her softly lit face and her hair cascading over her shoulders in rolls. On the back of the photograph the Marchese had written: Gisella, September 1937. Rosa slipped it back between the pages and took out the next one. It was of a young woman in a tennis dress. She had large bright eyes and a broad grin and her hair was piled up in a fashionable style. At first Rosa thought it was another mistress of the Marchese’s and was afraid of the pain that would cause Signora Corvetto, but then she realised the young woman was Clementina. She’s grown lovely, Rosa thought.
There was a photograph of the Villa Scarfiotti with a couple and a young girl standing in front of it along with an infant in a pram. The light in the office was growing dim and Rosa took the photograph to the window so she could see it more clearly. There was no notation on the back, but Rosa assumed the child in the pram was the Marchese and the man and woman were his parents. The girl with them must be Nerezza. Rosa’s fingers itched. She had seen the girl’s face before. She turned the photograph to the light so she could view the features more clearly. Her heart dropped to her feet. The sculptured cheekbones and upward-slanting eyes…she could have been looking at a picture of her own daughter!
Rosa stayed on after the Bianchis had left so she could give the package to Signora Corvetto when she returned. She didn’t want her to be alone when she received it. She wondered if she could remain strong for Signora Corvetto because her own mind was in turmoil. The resemblance between Sibilla and Nerezza was too striking for Rosa to have any doubt any more. She thought about the expression on Ada’s face when she had seen the key from Nerezza’s piano stool around her neck, and of the way Baron Derveaux had stared at her and said that from certain angles she reminded him of someone. She thought of the surround on the grave at the Villa Scarfiotti: she had never seen that statue face-on, only in profile. She went to the window and stared at her reflection in it, turning her head slightly. Is it possible? she asked herself. Isn’t Nerezza’s child buried with her in that grave?
Rosa returned to the Marchese’s uniform to see if it would reveal any more secrets; after all, if what she suspected was true, then the Marchese had been her uncle. She rubbed her forehead. She didn’t know what to think. She had heard that extraordinary beauty often skipped a generation and passed from grandmother to granddaughter. Still, there were enough resemblances between herself and Nerezza to make a link on their own. Both of them were musicians, each had a full figure, and Rosa had been taken to the convent around the same time that Nerezza had given birth to her child. Rosa pushed back her hair. Was she seeing more than what was there? If she was Nerezza’s child, then why had she been taken to the convent and why had the Marchese been told that she had died? The Marchesa Scarfiotti’s bloodless face appeared in Rosa’s mind. Surely if there was any wrongdoing then she was involved. But why would the Marchesa have wanted to get rid of Nerezza’s child? Rosa remembered Miss Butterfield, the governess, saying that the Marchesa was vain about her title. But Rosa was a girl. She wouldn’t have had any claim on the title of Marchesa if her uncle had married. Was it simply spite? It seemed common knowledge that Nerezza and the Marchesa had hated each other.
‘You’re here very late,’ said Signora Corvetto, walking in the door. She looked washed out. Her lipstick had vanished and her curls were falling flat. ‘Was it an awful day? I tell you, that meeting was an eye-opener—’ She stopped mid-sentence when she saw the package. Her face twisted into a terrible expression. ‘No!’ she screamed.
Rosa tried to help her into a chair but she stepped away. ‘Just tell me!’ she said, her eyes wide with fear. ‘Just tell me!’
‘The package was mislaid,’ Rosa said. ‘We only received it today. I’m sorry.’
Signora Corvetto sank to her knees. ‘Oh God!’ she said. It wasn’t a dignified position, but there was nothing dignified about grief. Rosa thought it was like birth: you simply had to do whatever helped you bear the pain.
‘This terrible war!’ Signora Corvetto wept. ‘When are they going to stop? When they’ve taken all the men?’
Rosa put her arms around Signora Corvetto. She thought that having to extinguish the light of a loved one was like tearing off a piece of your soul. Signora Corvetto rocked and trembled with the agony of it. After a few minutes, she muttered, ‘I’m sorry that I won’t hear his voice again or be able to listen to his lectures on Florentine architecture. All the things I shall miss when this war is over and we go back to our ordinary lives.’
Rosa wondered if they would ever have ordinary lives again. She thought of what she had felt when she had touched the Marchese’s uniform and of Nerezza’s dedication to her adolescent brother: For words that are yet to be said and for days that are yet to be lived. She was sorry for Signora Corvetto. She was grieving for a love that was a concoction of mirages and false expectations. From what Rosa knew of the Marchese at the villa and what she sensed from his uniform, by the time he had met Signora Corvetto, he had already given up hope for a happy future.
After more tears, Signora Corvetto gradually regained her composure. Her gaze fell to the package. Rosa helped her to stand up and passed it to her.
‘Here,’ she said, taking Signora Corvetto by the arm and leading her to her office. ‘Take your time to look through his things and say goodbye. I’ll be out here waiting for you if you need me.’
Rosa closed the door and sat at her desk again. At first there was only silence and then she heard Signora Corvetto sobbing. Rosa herself was experiencing a form of delayed shock. She took her coat from the cupboard and covered her legs with it. The lingering doubts she’d had about whether or not she was Nerezza’s daughter seemed to have dissipated in the past hour. It was a strange sensation to have such an epiphany after living in limbo about her origins for so many years. Nerezza was my mother? Rosa tried to get used to the idea. She had thought that if she ever discovered the identity of her mother she would be overwhelmed by feelings of love, affection and belonging. Instead she felt numb. She found herself wondering what sort of mother Nerezza would have been, and recalled those endless lists in the notebook; her perfectionism. She might not have been any kinder to Rosa than the Marchesa was to Clementina. Rosa recalled Suor Maddalena singing her to sleep. She hadn’t had all the material advantages that would have come with being the daughter of Nerezza, but she had been loved. She reminded herself that she didn’t know everything there was to know about Nerezza. Maybe she’d had qualities that Rosa wasn’t considering—she had loved her brother dearly, she loved music and art. I just don’t know, thought Rosa, staring at her hands. I don’t know what it would have been like if I hadn’t been taken away to the convent. The chance to know was denied me by somebody else.
She stared up at the ceiling. She tried to keep the Marchesa Scarfiotti out of her mind but the woman forced her way in. She saw the woman as she remembered her from the villa: haughty, vain, superior and cruel. I was thrown in prison because of her, Rosa thought. Maybe I grew up with no name and no family because of her too.
It was almost eight o’clock in the evening before Signora Corvetto emerged from her office. Rosa had rung the apartment to tell Ylenia that she would be late and to serve dinner for Antonio.
‘Signora Corvetto,’ Rosa said, standing. ‘Is there anyone I should call?’
Signora Corvetto took Rosa’s hand and squeezed it. ‘No, there is no-one to call.’
Rosa sensed how drained Signora Corvetto was through her skin, but she seemed more tranquil now she had expressed her grief.
‘When you come in tomorrow, I’d like you to type an official letter to accompany the Marchese’s things,’ she said. ‘We should be addressing it to the Marchesa Scarfiotti but I think we both know that would be a wasted effort. Address it to Clementina. I will take it with his belongings to her personally.’
‘Certainly,’ Rosa said.
Signora Corvetto smiled. ‘Now, you have a husband who has been patient with your work here. I want you to go home. I don’t know what I will do if you fall sick.’
‘What about you, Signora Corvetto?’ said Rosa. ‘You are all alone.’
Signora Corvetto shrugged. ‘It’s the life that I chose,’ she said, looking away. Then, turning back to Rosa, she said with a sad smile, ‘Let’s stop this formality. From now on I want you to call me Gisella.’
She took her coat from the cupboard and Rosa helped her with it.
‘At least let me walk you part of the way to your apartment,’ Rosa said.
‘As you wish,’ agreed Signora Corvetto.
The two women walked out of the building and onto the dark street. There was a blackout order but many Florentines had ignored it and left their curtains open. Rosa listened to the click her shoes made on the pavement.
‘Signora Corvetto…I mean, Gisella,’ she said. ‘There is something I want to talk to you about.’
Signora Corvetto nodded for Rosa to continue.
‘I know something about you. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do. I know Clementina is your daughter.’
Signora Corvetto stopped and stared at Rosa in the dim light. Neither of them moved.
‘How do you know?’ she asked quietly. ‘Did the Marchese tell you?’
Rosa shook her head. ‘No-one told me. I sensed it.’
Signora Corvetto stared at her feet before turning to Rosa. ‘You married your boss. I did too. Only my husband was forty years older than me and had already been married twice before. He’d outlived both his wives. People humoured him, “You won’t outlive this one”, but they despised me. It’s easy to look down on people when you have money. Rodolfo wanted my youth; I wanted a better life. I was an orphan, you know. Even a baker I had taken a liking to looked down on me. What other woman in my situation wouldn’t have married a rich man if she had the chance?’
‘But Signor Corvetto was too old to father children?’
Signora Corvetto nodded. ‘Poor Rodolfo was too tired to do anything. He didn’t even approach me on our wedding night.’
‘It must have been lonely,’ said Rosa, ‘for a young girl.’
‘His family and his social circle would not even address me. It was as though I didn’t exist. Not that we went out much.’
The two women continued walking.
‘When I met Emilio, his marriage was miserable too,’ said Signora Corvetto. ‘We found solace in each other. But when I became pregnant, there was the risk of a scandal. Rodolfo would have been humiliated. We had to invent a suspected case of tuberculosis. I went away to a “sanatorium” in Switzerland. The Marchesa was often abroad in those days so it wasn’t so difficult to pass Clementina off as her child, apart from the fact she’s always been so thin. There’s something wrong with her, did you know that?’
Rosa had suspected the Marchesa had some problem with her health. She hardly ate anything except nearly raw meat, and underneath the layers of make-up she had looked malnourished.
‘Well, she can’t have children so she agreed to take Clementina because at least she was Emilio’s natural daughter. I thought she might be softer towards my daughter, but that was an impossible hope. I was glad for your influence on Clementina, and I am glad now that she is approaching an age when she can get away from the Marchesa’s clutches. There will be no-one to protect Clementina now that her father is gone.’
Rosa and Signora Corvetto fell silent, each lost in her own thoughts. They walked on further than they had agreed and stopped outside the door to Signora Corvetto’s building and embraced before parting. Rosa watched the older woman enter the building and close the door behind her. She’s an orphan too, she thought. Her own situation of being separated from her children made her sympathetic to Signora Corvetto’s pain over Clementina.
After Rosa had finished the supper Ylenia had left for her in the kitchen, Antonio came in with the dictionary. ‘Coincidence,’ he read aloud. ‘A correlation of events without an obvious causal connection.’
Rosa reflected on the definition. She was experiencing a correlation of events, but she sensed there was something behind them. Something had urged her towards Nerezza’s piano and to try the silver key in the lock of the stool; and something had caused the Marchese’s belongings to be mislaid so that she would see them before Signora Corvetto did. She longed to speak with Ada, who, she now understood, had recognised Rosa as soon as she had seen the key. Hadn’t Ada said something was going on at the villa psychically after Rosa had arrived? But there wasn’t much chance of speaking to Ada. Signora Corvetto had told Rosa that the Marchesa was entertaining fascist high officials at the villa and had even had Mussolini there as a guest. All the staff, and anyone entering the grounds, were checked by the secret police. Rosa sighed. Approaching Ada would have to wait until after the war. At least, with the way things were going, that wouldn’t be too long away.
‘Why did you ask me to look up “coincidence”?’ asked Antonio, putting the dictionary aside.
Rosa shared everything with Antonio but she wasn’t going to tell him her suspicions about her origins or the Marchesa until she had firm proof.
‘It’s a word that often comes up in my work,’ she replied. ‘I wanted to be sure I understood its true meaning.’
‘Ah,’ said Antonio. ‘Perhaps what you mean then is more like “destiny”: a course of events that leads inevitably to one’s fate.’
Rosa stared at Antonio. She didn’t know why but what he had said chilled her to the bone. Coincidence, destiny, fate: all these things tied her unequivocally to the Villa Scarfiotti. And no matter how she tried to avoid it, fate was leading her back there.