Page 77 of A Place in the Sun
‘Pietro, was that you?’ Giovanni grins widely.
‘Bless you,’ he repeats, and we all hug him in the cold confines of the pantry, tears now rolling down Caterina’s face.
‘It’ll be okay. We have hope,’ she says, and I can feel tears forming in my eyes as I hug her.
And when we stop hugging, and sniffing: ‘It’s time you all came out of the pantry now, isn’t it?’
They shuffle their feet, contrite. The threenonnas, Caterina, Stella, Pietro, Luca and Aimee file into the kitchen, like naughty schoolchildren.
‘Sorry, Mum. Like you said, it’s okay to enjoy yourself. We just wanted—’
I cut him off: ‘I know, lovely. But sometimes you can’t have what you want. You have to let people make up their own minds.’
‘But there’s always hope,’ he says, and beams at me.
‘I know, yes, there is. But we’ll be leaving soon.’
‘But we don’t want to go!’ says Aimee. ‘We want to live here!’
I’m taken aback. I wasn’t expecting this. ‘What about school? Your friends? Going back to how things were? I can afford to buy us somewhere when we’ve sold Casa Luna.’
‘We don’t want to. We want to stay here,’ Luca says. ‘They have schools here too! Pietro is going to be starting and I could too. We thought if you and Giovanni got together, you’d have to stay. Nonna Rosa said so!’
Nonna Rosa shrugs, downcast.
‘And I want to see Snowy grow. And what about Stella? We can’t leave her behind! We’ve only just found her! She’s our sister!’
Luca is plainly in agreement. ‘Dad would have wanted us all to be together.’
Stella’s eyes are fixed on the ground. ‘I’ll be okay, guys. I’ll come and visit.’ She looks at me. ‘If that’s okay?’
‘Of course!’ My heart feels like it’s breaking all overagain at the prospect of leaving this young woman behind, taking her new-found family from her.
‘Well, we need to get ready for the class today.’ I pull myself up straight. ‘We need to decide about the lasagne for today’s lunch. Whose recipe are we going to use? I’ve been thinking about how we can do this fairly …’
Nonna Rosa flaps an arthritic hand at me. ‘There’s no need,’ she says breezily.
‘There’s every need. We have to work together to keep what’s important here going. This place.’
‘We know,’ says Nonna Teresa.
I remind myself that after today we need a conversation about them trying to match-make me with Giovanni and getting the children’s hopes up.
‘And it has to be done fairly. Not creating more divisions, like that stunt in the garden just now,’ I say firmly.
Giovanni’s hands are on his hips, and the pair of us are like cross teachers, scowling at the threenonnas.
Nonna Rosa takes a deep breath and pulls herself up to her full height, only an inch or so above the other two, but it makes a difference. She lifts her chin defiantly.
‘We have made a decision!’ she announces, ignoring my comments about the unsuccessful match-making.
‘Being forced to spend time in a small pantry makes you see things differently,’ says Nonna Lucia.
‘Actually, it was Stella who made us realize,’ says Nonna Teresa.
I fold my arms and cock my head.
‘Locked in the pantry, when you were trying to match-make Giovanni and me.’
