Lucy Gordon - A Family For Keeps

'I'd better come too,' Rosa said at once.

'I can be trusted to look after him,' he complained.

'Yes, but-he likes to see me when he wakes up,' Rosa said seriously, and hurried out of the room.

Vincenzo sighed. 'She's just like her mo- Like Bianca. She thinks nobody else can be trusted to do anything. We won't leave you alone for long.'

When they had gone Julia began to go through the album Rosa had given her. She knew the contents would hurt, but she had to learn all she could.

It was full of pictures of Bianca and Rosa: more wedding shots, then every milestone in the child's life, birthdays, Christmas, Epiphany.

There was the child in her father's arms, snuggling against him with an air of content. On this evidence he looked like a good father.

And he really did love her, she thought. That's why he took her with him instead of leaving her with my mother. What am I going to tell her when the time comes?

'Come along,' said Rosa's voice from the doorway.

She was holding Carlo by the hand, leading him forward until they were both standing before Julia. He was the image of his father.

'Say "Buongiorno",' Rosa told him in a stage whisper.

But the little boy hid his face against her and shook his head vigorously.

'He's shy,' Rosa said. 'Look, little one, here's a present for you.'

But he only shook his head the more and began to grizzle, clinging onto his sister.

'I'm sorry,' Rosa said, lifting him in her arms. 'I'd better take him back. He'll be better later.'

She hurried out with the weeping child. Vincenzo, who had been watching, said in a low voice, 'While we have a moment, there's something I need to know, although I have a horrid feeling I know the answer. If your husband simply vanished I don't suppose there was ever a divorce?'

'Not that I heard of.'

'So he was still married to you when he married Bianca. Bastardo! And Carlo is illegitimate. You've seen how it is with him and Rosa. He's one of the things that's holding her together.'

Something else linking her to her new life. Something else taking her away from her mother.

'Julia-'

'It's all right,' she said, shaking her head. 'I've got my breath now.'

She rose and went in search of Rosa. Hearing a murmur from behind a door across the hall, she followed the sound and found herself in a room with a bed and a cot. The two children were sitting on the floor.

'May I come in?' she asked tentatively.

Instead of hiding, the little boy giggled at her. Encouraged, Julia sat down on the edge of the bed.

'He doesn't mind me?' she asked.

'No, he's all right here,' Rosa explained, 'because this is our room. Befana brought him lots of presents this morning. Look.' She swept out a hand towards a merry pile. 'But this one is still his favourite, even though it's years old.'

She pointed to a blue furry rabbit that the boy was clutching, so old and shabby that much of its fur was gone. As Julia looked a strange feeling began to come over her, part ache, part joy. She had seen that rabbit before, long ago, in another life, when it was bright and new.

'Yes, it looks very old,' she said slowly. 'Who gave it to him?'

'I did,' Rosa said proudly. 'His name is Danny. He was my best friend when I was young.' She spoke as if she were a hundred. 'Mamma said that when we met I was clutching him and I wouldn't let him go. Papa was ever so cross.'

'Wh-why?' Julia asked in a shaking voice.

'He didn't like Danny. He kept trying to throw him away.'

Of course he did. Because he knew I'd given you that toy just before we were parted, and he wanted to wipe me out of your mind.

'When you say he kept trying to throw him away-'

'He did it again and again. Mamma kept rescuing Danny and giving him back to me. It's funny that she understood when Papa didn't.'

'She sounds nice,' Julia said carefully.

'She was lovely. She used to get cross with Papa because he wouldn't write home to the family and try to get some pictures of my mother.'

'She did that?'

'Yes. She'd ask me if I remembered my real mother, but he stopped her. I heard them arguing. He said she was my mother, but she said a real mother was special and nobody could take her place.'

So Bianca had been generous and kind. Julia felt a moment's gratitude to her, mingled with pity that she too had come under Bruce's spell.

'I don't think Papa liked my mother very much,' Rosa went on. 'He didn't keep any pictures of her, and he wouldn't talk about her. If I asked him, he always started talking about something else.'

'You don't have any pictures of her at all?'

'No,' Rosa said wistfully. 'I don't even know what she looked like.'

'You can't remember anything?'

'Oh, yes, odd things. She used to hold me close against her, and she smelled lovely. And she laughed all the time. I remember her voice too, not the words because I didn't understand them, but the way she spoke. She loved me. I could hear it.

'But I can't see her face. That's why it would be nice to have some pictures of her and me together, and it would be real again. Because she was real, and yet she wasn't. Like a ghost really. If I saw her I wouldn't recognise her.'

'Yes,' Julia whispered. 'I know what you mean.' Carlo made a small sound, demanding attention. Rosa took charge, arranging his arms more firmly around the elderly rabbit.

'Danny looks like a good friend,' Julia said.

'He's always been my good friend,' Rosa confirmed.

'But now he has to look after Carlo. I've explained that to Danny, so that he doesn't think I don't love him any more.'

'That was clever of you,' Julia said, 'Some things need to be explained in case people-or rabbits-misunderstand.'

Now she knew why Vincenzo had said the baby was keeping Rosa together. She had become his mother, responding to his needs and forgetting her own, feeding him, encouraging him.

She lost me at the same age, Julia thought. She knows exactly what to do for him.

And suddenly she saw herself, not as a mother alone, or a mother bereft, but as a mother in an eternal line of mothers, all loving a child more than themselves, whether or not it was their own child, and ready for all the sacrifices.

Whatever those sacrifices might mean.

When it came to serving lunch Rosa was in her element, taking charge of the kitchen, blithely disregarding the fact that Vincenzo was a restaurateur, and reducing him to the status of a waiter. Julia watched in amusement as he meekly obeyed her orders.

As the guest of honour she was served first and received constant attention. The meal was excellent, and she solemnly thanked her hostess.

'I was there too,' Vincenzo said, aggrieved.

'Yes, you were very helpful,' Rosa told him kindly. Behind her hand she told Julia, 'Actually Uncle Vincenzo did quite a lot.'

'Thank you, ma'am,' he said, catching her eyes and grinning.

She grinned back. Carlo joined in the laughter, banging his spoon on the table, and Julia laughed from sheer happiness.

Afterwards Rosa put Carlo down for his nap while the others got on with the washing up.

'I must take my hat off for the way you're coping,' he said.

'I've had to take a few deep breaths, but I'll be blowed if I let anyone know that.'

'Except me. Or don't I count?'

'In a way you don't,' she mused, not unkindly, merely reflecting. 'You already know the worst of me.'

'I know the best, too.'

She turned to him eagerly. 'Vincenzo, listen, something wonderful happened. Do you remember that rabbit I told you about, the one I bought her a few days before we were separated?'

He nodded. 'It's Danny, isn't it? I thought so as soon as I knew who you were. I remember the first time I saw her. She was clutching it tight. Her father didn't like that.'