night, so excited will I be at the prospect of seeing your perfect face again.
Until then, my love,
I am yours… Cosimo.
The following day was the first day of term, and Livia awoke filled with excitement. She dressed carefully in her best black skirt, a cream silk blouse and a dark-green cashmere cardigan of her mother’s.
‘I hope you have a lovely first day,’ said Luisa, as she poured coffee into a cup for her daughter. ‘You look very smart, are you meeting anyone important today?’
Livia blushed. ‘No, I just wanted to look nice.’
‘Well, you do. But I worry it might snow again later. Are you dressed warmly enough?’
‘Yes, Mamma, I borrowed your cardigan – I hope that’s all right.’
‘Yes, of course it is, but what coat will you wear?’
‘My dark-red one – you always say it makes me look rosy-cheeked.’
Her mother smiled. ‘It’s a very pretty coat.’
‘And it matches the new scarf and hat you gave me for Christmas,’ Livia said delightedly. Her mother smiled.
Livia arrived at the Palazzo at ten minutes to eight and waited, pulling her dark-red muffler more tightly around her neck. The minutes ticked by. She paced up and down looking around her, but Cosimo was nowhere to be seen. She checked her watch again – it was now fifteen minutes past eight. Perhaps he’d had to help his father with something, she told herself; or maybe his mother needed him to go to the market before college. She tried to relax, stamping her feet to keep warm.
At half past eight, wondering if she had perhaps misunderstood his instructions, she took his letter from her coat pocket and read it again. But there was no mistake: it was Thursday morning, the first day of term, she had arrived before eight o’clock and she was waiting at the correct location.
Her feet were frozen and her fingers blue with cold, before she finally decided to leave. It was nearly nine o’clock, and she would be late for her first lecture. She hurried to the university building and slid into her seat next to Elena.
‘You’re late,’ her friend whispered.
‘I know. I was waiting for Cosimo outside Palazzo Strozzi, but he didn’t come.’
Elena blushed slightly and bit her lip.
‘What?’ Livia asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’ Livia was suddenly apprehensive.
‘He’s been called up. A lot of them have. He’s in the army.’
Livia was in a state of shock, her mind whirring. She recalled a conversation with Cosimo before Christmas. He had been so downcast about the prospect of joining the army. It was as if he had had a premonition. ‘I’ve never fired a gun and I’m not sure I could kill anyone,’ he had said to her when they had last met.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered at last to Elena. ‘He loathed the idea of fighting.’
‘I know. But they need new recruits. There have been so many casualties.’
‘When did it happen?’ whispered Livia. ‘He wrote to me just before Christmas and mentioned nothing about it.’
‘He got a letter on Christmas Eve. Quite a few of the students did. They had to report somewhere before the New Year. It was all very sudden.’
‘Do we know where they are being sent?’ Livia asked finally, dreading the answer. She could think of only two theatres of war where recruits might be urgently needed – one was the frozen wastes of the Eastern Front, and the other the deserts of North Africa. In either case, Cosimo would be unlikely to survive. She felt sick with nerves, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Elena took her hand in hers and squeezed it. When her friend’s answer finally came, Livia’s heart almost stopped.
‘They’re being sent to Russia, I think.’
Five
Rome
April 1942
Isabella stood for a few moments outside Hotel Flora, breathing deeply, trying to calm her mind. She had been invited to audition for the director Vicenzo Lucchese, one of the few directors who famously refused to work for the Fascist film industry. Isabella had never met him before, but his reputation had gone before him, and she was nervous. ‘Bewitching’ was a description people used about him. ‘Impatient’ was another. What was generally agreed was that he was ‘a genius’. Although the descendant of an old aristocratic Roman family, his political leanings were widely known to be left of centre, and he rarely used his title of ‘Count’ Lucchese.
In her handbag was the letter she had received, inviting her to the audition. She took it out and reread it.