her father in disbelief. ‘I can’t take it in. So Mamma is alone in the house with Nonno and Angela and surrounded by German troops?’
Giacomo nodded.
‘If you go there, and they’re rounding up the men, they’ll take you too and shoot you.’
‘I can’t leave her in the house alone, Livia,’ he said, his voice trembling.
‘No, no of course not,’ she replied gently. ‘But maybe I should go instead.’
‘No! You must stay here – keep on reporting to Villa Triste, carry on our work with the Resistance, and look after Sara. I’ll leave right now and try to work out how to get them out.’
Standing forlornly by the sitting-room window, Livia watched her father’s car disappear down the road. She had a terrible sense of foreboding. His chances of coming back alive – of her family surviving what was clearly an appalling massacre – seemed utterly remote. The support system of her family seemed to be collapsing beneath her, and she felt her world crumbling. She was responsible to so many and yet felt utterly alone.
Livia went about her tasks that day in a daze. She queued for bread and milk, and signed in at the offices of the Fascist police. At lunchtime, she met up with Cosimo outside the Uffizi to pool information for their transmission later that day for Radio Cora.
‘I know how worried you must be, but I’m sure Giacomo will be all right,’ he reassured her, when she told him what had happened. ‘He’s a wily old soul, your father.’ He put his arm comfortingly around her shoulders, and kissed her hair.
‘I wish I shared your faith,’ she replied. ‘He looked so broken when he left the apartment. I worry that he’ll do something foolish.’
Livia heard nothing from her father for several days and began to fear the worst. And yet she could not cry – it seemed too defeatist. She thought of his last words to her as he left: ‘You have your work to do.’ Now, she was determined to live up to them.
One lunchtime, she was at home collecting the radio transmitter, when the phone rang. Was it her father? She picked up the phone; it was a member of their Resistance cell. German tanks had been spotted heading south along the Arno river. Could she go and count them and urgently radio the information to the Allies?
She picked up the transmitter, hid it in her shopping basket and arrived at the Ponte Vecchio just in time to see the German column. She counted over thirty tanks. She then ran to one of the safe houses nearby and made her transmission. On her way home an hour later, Allied planes flew low over the city, presumably strafing the column. She had a brief moment of elation as she climbed the stairs to the apartment. That day, at least, they’d had a small victory.
The phone was ringing again when she let herself into the hall. Presuming it would be a member of the Resistance congratulating her on her work, she picked it up.
‘Livia…’ Although faint, it was clearly her father’s voice.
‘Papa, thank God. Where are you?’
‘I’m in the villa.’ He sounded exhausted.
‘Is Mamma safe?’
‘Yes. But Livia, it’s been so terrible.’ He began to weep – loud wracking sobs of desperation. ‘Gino is dead,’ he sobbed, ‘along with every able-bodied man in the village – all slaughtered like cattle, even the priest.’
Livia felt sick. She stood for a few seconds swallowing back the bile, trying to calm herself. Her father needed her to be strong.
‘Why would they do such a thing?’ she asked eventually.
‘I don’t know,’ he said weakly. ‘It was probably a reprisal for something trivial. The Germans are capable of such cruelty. They are on the run and are destroying everything in their wake.’ Giacomo began to weep again. Livia’s mind was full of questions.
‘Papa, tell me what happened. How did you survive?’ she asked quietly.
‘It’s a very long story,’ he said wearily. She heard him take a deep breath, trying to calm himself. ‘When I drove up to the village,’ he began falteringly, ‘I saw flames leaping into the sky and troops everywhere. I hid the car in the woods a few kilometres away, and spent the night in an old cave where I used to play as a boy – the entrance is hidden in a copse. The next morning, I hid in the undergrowth on the outskirts of the village, and once I realised the tanks and troop carriers had left,