goings in the piazza. Lights were coming on in the shops, making the scene outside the window feel inviting.
‘My mother and I used to shop in the department store over there,’ Livia said, indicating La Rinascente, ‘but we always ate in one of the hotels afterwards – all very safe and respectable. I suspect she would have thought this place was too…’ she paused, searching for the right word, ‘… bohemian.’ Livia looked around her at the glamorous clientele.
Cosimo laughed and beckoned the waiter over. ‘Two glasses of sweet vermouth, please.’
‘I’ve never drunk this before,’ said Livia, as the waiter laid their drinks on the table with a flourish. She lifted the glass nervously to her mouth and took a sip. ‘Mmmm… It’s delicious.’
‘Good, I’m glad you like it.’ Cosimo sipped his drink thoughtfully.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked, reaching across the table and touching his hand gently.
‘I’m just a bit worried about something,’ he replied.
‘What? Tell me.’
‘It’s not a very romantic subject.’
‘Don’t worry about that. What is it?’
He put his drink down on the table and grasped her hand in his. ‘I can’t stop thinking about what would happen if I got called up.’
‘I understand – it must be a frightening prospect.’
‘I’ve heard so many bad things from my father – so many young men have been wounded, their lives destroyed.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘It seems such a waste, especially for a cause I don’t believe in.’
‘My father says it’s madness to be invading Greece, and even Russia, when the army is so massively under-resourced. It is the work of an “egomaniac”, he says. I can’t understand how some people still think Mussolini has brought some honour to this country.’
They sat for a moment, lost in their own thoughts.
Livia broke the silence. ‘What would you do… if you were called up?’
‘I’d try to get into the Medical Corps, I suppose.’
‘I thought they only took medical students for that.’
‘They must need orderlies,’ he said. ‘Or maybe I could work as a radio operator. I’m good at that sort of thing. Anything but proper soldiering – I’ve never fired a gun and I’m not sure I could kill anyone.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘Oh God! I don’t know… I just want to go on with my studies.’
‘Try not to think about it,’ she said comfortingly. ‘With luck, it will be over soon.’
As Christmas approached, the days grew shorter and the sun began to disappear behind threatening dark clouds scudding across huge skies. When Livia went up to the roof terrace with a basket of washing first thing in the morning, her fingers were often red with cold as she hung the sheets and towels on the line to dry. Sometimes, when she returned to collect it later in the afternoon, the laundry was frozen solid and she and her mother would drape it across the backs of the dining chairs where it dripped water onto the parquet flooring.
Livia and Cosimo still met every day – once on their way into university and again in the evening, when he would walk her home. Sometimes they would stop to buy a bag of steaming chestnuts from one of the traders who had set up small braziers at the side of the road. Between mouthfuls, they would warm their hands on the hot paper bag. Before they reached her apartment, he would pull her to one side, and wrap his arms around her. When he kissed her, she felt as if her body was melting into his. But knowing that her mother would be waiting for her, she would reluctantly pull away.
‘I must go in,’ she would say.
‘Stay a little longer,’ he would plead.
On the last day of term, they stood together, out of sight of the apartment, dreading the moment when they would have to part.
‘I have to go back to the country tomorrow, with my family,’ she blurted out. ‘I wish we didn’t have to, but my grandfather is all alone.’
‘I understand,’ said Cosimo, holding her heart-shaped face in his hands and kissing her gently on the mouth. ‘But I will miss you.’
‘And I’ll miss you – desperately,’ she replied. ‘I can hardly imagine not seeing you every day. But we’ll be back early in the New Year. Perhaps you could come to dinner and meet my parents. I’m sure you’d get on with my father very well, and I know he would love you.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Why not come in with me now?’ she suggested. ‘It’s