A Family For Keeps

'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.

CHAPTER TEN

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.'

'Yes, she told me. She also said that your sister kept rescuing it. She seems to have defended my right to be part of my daughter's life, despite everything he did to blacken me.'

'He cast you in a bad light whenever he could. I suppose he had to, in order to explain why he had no contact with your family. But, as you say, Bianca defended you.'

He stopped quickly as Rosa came back to say that Carlo was sleeping. She spent the next hour going through the books Julia had bought her, showing them to Vincenzo and carefully explaining any points that he might find too difficult to understand. Julia watched him with fascination, liking the way he didn't talk down to the child.

After that Carlo woke up and they all played magnetic fishing. Carlo went at it with great energy and crowed with delight whether he succeeded or not. Vincenzo was unaccountably clumsy, while Julia and Rosa, both equally dextrous, went head to head in a hard-fought challenge.

'I think that's a draw,' Vincenzo said at last through his laughter as the two competitors solemnly shook hands.

The phone rang. Yawning, he answered it.

'Gemma! Are you having a good day? Oh, I see-yes, it's a tough situation-you'd better stay. Don't worry, I can manage. I'll just take my orders from Rosa. Ciao.'

He hung up. 'Gemma's elderly mother is feeling poorly and she wants to stay there tonight.'

'Lovely!' Rosa bounced with joy. 'Now Julia can stay with us. I'll make up the bed in Gemma's room.'

'Rosa,' Vincenzo said hastily, 'you're supposed to ask our guest what she wants to do, not just mow her down with a bulldozer.'

Rosa turned astonished eyes on Julia. 'But you do want to stay, don't you?' she asked in a puzzled voice. 'I mean, you don't really want to walk home alone in the cold and dark.'

'She wouldn't be alone,' Vincenzo said. 'I'd walk with her.'

'No way,' Julia said. 'You can't leave Rosa and Carlo here alone.'

'No, I can't, can I?' he realised.

'You see?' Rosa said triumphantly. 'And you don't want to do that walk alone, do you? Because it's terribly cold and terribly dark and you might fall into the water and you wouldn't like that.'

'I might even get lost and that would never do. It's very kind of you to ask me.'

'That's all right, then.' Rosa bustled away.

Julia choked with laughter, barely able to meet Vincenzo's eye.

'It looks like you're stuck with me,' she said.

'Oh, we've both been given our orders. She's a very assertive little character.'

'She always was,' Julia remembered. 'Even when she was Carlo's age she was strong-willed.'

'I wonder where she gets that from,' Vincenzo said wryly.

'No, you don't. You think you know.'

He grinned. 'It may have crossed my mind.'

'I'd better go and help Rosa.'

Together they put fresh linen on the bed in the snug little room. The look Rosa gave Julia was brim-full of delight.

We could be a family, she thought as they settled down for tea. I'm dreaming and if I pinch myself I'll wake up. But I don't want to.

Nothing happened to spoil it. A lull fell on the evening and they watched cartoons on television until it was bedtime.

Rosa departed with Carlo, then came back in her pyjamas.

'Carlo wants you to say goodnight to him,' she said, taking Julia's hand.

But they found him already asleep. Despite her efforts she felt her eyes blur as time shifted back to another dimly lit bedroom, another two-year-old, sleeping in perfect trust and confidence.