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- Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
Ferrara, Italy. 1940. Lili Passigli is studying at the University of Ferrara when Mussolini's Racial Laws deem her of 'inferior' Jewish descent, blindsiding her completely. As Hitler's strength grows across Europe, Lili's world begins to shrink around her, with the papers awash in Fascist propaganda and the city walls desecrated with anti-semitic slurs. When Germany invades northern Italy, Lili and her best friend Esti find themselves on their own in Nazi-occupied territory. With the help of the Resistance, Lili and Esti flee with Esti's two-year-old son Theo, in tow, facing a harrowing journey south toward the Allies and freedom. On this trek through war-torn Italy, they will face untold challenges and devastating decisions.
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ONE GOOD THING
Georgia Hunter
CONTENTS
4For my parents, Tom and Isabelle, and for my boys, Robert, Wyatt, and Ransom, with love5
6
PROLOGUE
She could carry the boy, but it would slow them down. He’s too heavy. She grips his small hand as they run, trying not to fall. Twigs snap underfoot, the ground uneven.
‘Faster,’ she tells him. ‘Pick up your feet.’
A bullet lodges with a sharp thunk in the trunk of a pine a few metres ahead. Lili stoops reflexively, resists the urge to turn around, her breath ragged in her ears like an ocean in a storm. She isn’t sure if it’s a farmer shooting or another band of partisans or Mussolini’s men from the Salò. It could be the Italian police or a German soldier. They’d scanned the field carefully, she and the others, before veering from the safety of the forest canopy to inspect the vegetable garden of what they thought was an abandoned farm. They’d unearthed five potatoes and were trekking back towards the tree line, giddy at the prospect of a meal come sundown, when the first shot was fired and someone up ahead – Ziggie, maybe – shouted. Run.
‘This way,’ Lili orders, weaving to the right, the group now scattered. ‘Jump!’ She hoists the boy into the air. They leap over a log in unison and land without breaking stride, sprinting on, deeper into the woods, their dirt- caked palms sticky with sweat. 8
The lace of Lili’s boot has come undone and a bright red gash blooms on her forearm from the scrape of a branch, she presumes, but she feels nothing.
Don’t stop, she tells herself. Don’t let go of his hand. Just keep going.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE
Ferrara
December 1940
Eight thirty- two. Lili slides a pencil from behind her ear and writes the time in her chart. ‘It’s every seven minutes now,’ she says from her seat on Esti’s sofa. ‘I think we should go.’
Esti paces the perimeter of the room. She waves a hand. ‘My water hasn’t broken. I’m fine.’
‘Are you sure? You don’t look fine.’
‘Thanks,’ Esti says, making a face at Lili.
‘Sorry. You don’t look yourself.’
‘I hardly feel myself. But I refuse to sit around the hospital for days. My mother laboured for forty- eight hours with me. Besides, Niko’s not back yet. I don’t want to leave without him.’
Lili sighs. ‘All right. But when your contractions come five minutes apart, we’re going. You know I’d do anything for you, Es, but please don’t make me be the one to deliver your baby.’
Esti laughs, emitting a deep bark of a sound, and Lili shakes her head.
‘You’re as stubborn as they come, you know that, right?’
‘So my husband tells me.’
‘Speaking of your husband, where is he?’ 12
‘He didn’t say.’
Lili chews the eraser of her pencil. Niko’s been out a lot in recent weeks, she’s noticed, his whereabouts always vague. It’s unlike him. ‘I’ll write a note, then,’ she says, ‘in case we leave before he’s home.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Esti says, then winces. She props herself in a doorframe and closes her eyes, pressing her forehead into the back of her hand as she breathes through another contraction. Lili checks the time.
‘Six and a half minutes,’ she says when Esti straightens.
‘Noted.’
Esti resumes her slow lumber around the room, and Lili frowns, wondering how she might convince her friend she’d be smart to labour with a doctor nearby. But to argue with Esti, she’s learned, is to waste her breath.
They’d met three years earlier, in Lili’s first week at university. Lili had just moved to Ferrara from Bologna and didn’t know a soul; she was missing home and trying to find her footing. When she slipped into the seat beside Esti’s in her Modern European Literature class, Esti turned and said hello and her smile was so warm and self-assured, Lili forgot to be shy. Esti’s Italian was excellent – Lili had no idea, at first, that she was Greek. They struck up a conversation, making a plan to meet for lunch later that day, then every day after, and within a month, they arranged to share a flat on Via Belfiore, a short walk from school.
There were times in those early weeks when Lili wondered why Esti had chosen her to befriend. Lili was seventeen then, still girlish, reserved. She was most comfortable with a book in her hand or at the keys of her typewriter. Esti, in her third year at the university, was nearly twenty, and, in Lili’s mind, every part a woman. Smart. Opinionated. Beautiful. With her smooth curves, cobalt eyes, and stylish wardrobe, she was the envy of most of the girls on campus. Perhaps it was the fact that they were so different, Lili told herself in the beginning, that they got on so well. Lili was a planner, careful in her ways; Esti a champion of spontaneity. But in the end, Lili realised, their differences didn’t matter. They were inseparable. 13Lili has barely a memory from her years in Ferrara that doesn’t include Esti.
Esti was there when Lili’s first opinion piece was published in the Corriere Padano – she’d insisted they celebrate with dinner and dancing. This is my writer friend Lili Passigli! she told everyone they met that night. You’ll do well to remember her name, she’s going to be famous someday. It was Esti who stole Lili away on her eighteenth birthday for a weekend in Venice, where they got lost for hours in a maze of impossibly narrow alleys, feasted on fried sardines and tender green moleche crabs, and chatted up the gondoliers who gave them free rides back to their hotel by flat-bottomed boat, the water glistening beneath them like polished lacquer in the moonlight. Esti was there, too, on the afternoon when Lili received the telegram from Bologna with news that the cancer had finally taken her mother. She’d wept with her and boiled pasta for her, travelled back to Bologna with her for the funeral and the shiva, and later attended Lili’s classes to take notes until Lili found the strength to return to her studies.
Esti was there, always, like the older sister Lili never had.
‘Six minutes, twenty seconds,’ Lili says, the next time Esti muscles through a contraction. ‘Let’s check your bag again, make sure you’ve got everything you need.’ She reaches for the canvas tote at her feet.
‘It’s all in there,’ Esti says, her face pinched. ‘You packed it, remember?’
Still, Lili rummages through, matching the contents of the bag to the inventory in her head: nightgown, slippers, underwear, a flannel blanket, a miniature white knit jumper and a matching hat. She’s refolding the blanket when Esti makes a small sound, like a hiccup.
‘Oh,’ she says, and Lili looks up. Esti stands stock still, a puddle between her feet.
‘Oh!’ Lili cries, knocking over the tote as she leaps from the couch. ‘I’ll get some towels.’
It’s three in the morning when the doctor finally gives Esti permission to push. Niko stands at the head of the bed, a hand on Esti’s shoulder. 14He’d arrived at the hospital just after ten, panic-stricken at the thought of missing the birth of his child.
‘The waiting room is just down the hall,’ the doctor tells him now.
Niko swallows and makes a meek offer to stay, his face pale, but Esti shoos him away.
‘I’ll be fine, love,’ she manages. ‘Lili’s here.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
Relieved, Niko kisses his wife on her forehead then nods once at Lili, as if to wish her good luck before leaving. Lili returns the nod and steels herself, realising how unprepared she is for what’s about to come.
The minutes pass slowly. Lili presses a damp cloth to Esti’s neck between contractions and offers up words of encouragement that feel entirely inadequate. The room is cold but Esti’s skin is hot to the touch and slick with sweat. Dark tendrils of hair plaster her forehead. Every few minutes she moans as the pain builds, crunching her chin towards her sternum, and Lili has to hold back tears as Esti screams out in agony. She’s glad Niko isn’t here. It’s nearly impossible to stand by, helpless – to watch her friend endure such pain.
‘Just one more push,’ the doctor says from the foot of the bed.
Lili’s certain that Esti has broken a bone in her hand by the time the sound of a baby’s wail fills the room.
‘It’s a boy,’ the nurse calls out a moment later, and Esti, panting, lets her head fall back to her pillow.
‘You are a hero,’ Lili says, kissing Esti’s cheek. She smells of salt and lavender. They can hear the doctor giving orders at the foot of the bed, the snip of the umbilical cord.
Niko is called back once Esti has been cleaned up and the baby bathed, weighed, measured, and swaddled.
‘Come meet your son,’ Esti says. She sits upright, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, the pain of her labour already a thing of the past.
Lili steps aside and Niko moves to his wife, staring at the bundle in her 15arms. All that’s visible of the baby is his face – round cheeks, velvet skin, dark lashes, mauve, heart-shaped lips.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he stammers.
‘Here,’ Esti says. ‘Take him.’
Niko blinks. ‘Right now? He looks so comfortable.’
‘Niko.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Niko! Take him!’
Niko bends, manoeuvring the baby gingerly into his arms, and Lili watches his hesitation meld to wonder and then joy. A broad smile stretches across his face, and he sways gently.
‘Welcome to the world, little one,’ he says softly.
Lili smiles, too, her limbs heavy, as the adrenaline, the worry, begin to drain from her. Esti is okay. The baby is healthy. Niko is here. ‘I’ll let you sleep,’ she says, making her way towards the door. ‘Give you all some privacy.’
‘What?’ Esti shakes her head. ‘You can’t leave now. The party’s just started. Stay for a while, would you?’
Lili laughs, realising the only thing missing from Esti’s hospital bag is a bottle of prosecco. Sleep can wait, she decides, grateful to be a part of these first few moments, together as a family of four.
The maternity ward is quiet, the world outside the window in Esti’s room still dark. Niko is dozing, curled up awkwardly in a chair in the corner, Lili propped on her elbow beside Esti in the hospital bed. Theo, named after his paternal grandfather Theódoros, is asleep belly- down on Esti’s chest. Lili studies him closely: the wisps of his eyebrows, the spiderweb of tiny pink capillaries threading through his eyelids, the paperthin fingernails.
‘I can’t believe you made him,’ she says softly.
‘I can’t either.’
‘He looks like you.’ 16
Esti peers down at the top of his head, adjusts his cap over his ear. ‘You think?’
‘Your faces are shaped the same.’
Esti smiles. ‘I wonder what he’ll be like.’
‘He’ll be confident, like his mama. And playful like his papa.’
‘I hope so.’
‘I know so.’
Esti strokes the back of one of Theo’s fists with her index finger. ‘I’ve been telling myself for the last nine months the timing doesn’t matter,’ she says after a while. ‘But now that he’s here … Look at him. He’s so innocent. So helpless.’
Esti’s right – it’s a terrifying prospect, to raise a child at a time like this, with Europe at war and with the Racial Laws in Italy restricting their every move – but Lili isn’t about to say so.
‘I imagine there’s no such thing as perfect timing,’ she says. ‘Look at us – you were born during the Great War; I was conceived on the heels of it. Our parents made do. And I’d like to think we turned out okay.’
‘Well, you did,’ Esti quips. ‘Your life is so in order. I can barely remember to turn in a paper or to make it to a dentist appointment.’
Lili laughs. ‘As if any of that stuff matters. You’re going to be an amazing mother, Es.’
Esti raises her brow.
‘The war is being fought across borders, not in Italy. And anyway, it’ll be over soon,’ Lili adds. ‘They’re calling it a blitzkrieg, right?’
‘The war may end, but what state will the world be in? And who says the Racial Laws aren’t here to stay?’
Lili wants to argue but she can’t. Mussolini put his laws into place a full year before Hitler sent his men into Poland. ‘Don’t worry yourself with any of that right now,’ Lili says. ‘You’ve got more important things to think about.’
Esti lets her eyes flutter closed, a hand resting on Theo’s back. Lili watches her fingers rise and fall to the quick rhythm of his breath. At least 17they have access to private medical care, she thinks. Something the laws haven’t taken away. She makes a mental note to write down the dates of Esti’s follow-up appointments before she leaves the hospital.
Theo flinches and Esti opens her eyes. ‘I fell asleep,’ she says.
‘I’m glad,’ Lili says. ‘You should sleep more.’
‘I was dreaming.’
‘Oh?’
Esti smiles faintly. ‘Yes. About the day Niko proposed.’
‘It was a good day,’ Lili says.
She remembers it well, despite the fact that more than two years have passed since. Niko had come to her beforehand – I want to make it special, he said – and Lili had helped him to organise it all: the picnic in the park, the bottle of Taittinger, Esti’s favourite sparkling wine. She’d even gone with him to pick out the ring, a simple gold fede, moulded in the shape of two hands, clasped together at the bezel. The three had celebrated over dinner at their favourite trattoria, Al Brindisi, then walked through town with a bottle of half-drunk Lambrusco to the ancient bastioni, the massive stone wall encircling the city. They’d sat for hours atop the wall, admiring the shimmer of the canal below, faded and mist-bound beneath the star-studded sky, talking about weddings and plans for once they’d graduated.
It wasn’t until the end of the otherwise perfect night that the subject of Mussolini’s Manifesto della Razza finally arose – it had just been announced, the week before. Real Italians, the manifest proclaimed, are descendants of a pure, Aryan Race; Jews are descendants of an inferior race. The announcement had blindsided Lili; she’d never considered herself Jewish or Italian, but both. She’d sat quietly that evening, her arms wrapped around her knees as Niko and Esti argued over the meaning of it. Look what’s happening in Germany, Niko said, jabbing his cigarette north. With the Nuremberg Laws. And with Il Duce sitting pretty in the Fuhrer’s pocket … it feels like we’re up against the clock. Esti had rolled her eyes. It’s just a stupid piece of paper, she countered. Some sort of concession. A way of appeasing Hitler. Besides, she 18added, the pope is Italian! And he’s human. He wouldn’t allow it.
Esti was certain nothing would come of the decree. (Easy for you and Niko to say, Lili had argued, when it’s not your country issuing it – Niko is Greek, too, and like Esti, had come to Italy on a student visa.) And for a while, it seemed Esti was right. Piazza Trento e Trieste still teemed with bicyclists pedalling home from work or out to dinner; the streets were still full of children chasing one another, cones of soft gelato in hand. Niko kept up his Sunday matches at the tennis club, and Lili and Esti spent their weekends perusing the market by Castello Estense for just ripe peaches and bags of Vignola cherries, or meeting for a glass of wine and plate of ciupeta bread before heading to the cinema for a show. That September, Lili travelled to the island of Rhodes for Esti and Niko’s wedding, where the friends spent five magical days swimming and eating and celebrating before returning to their classes in Ferrara. It felt entirely possible that their lives would continue on exactly as they always had.
They were living in a different reality then, Lili thinks now, her eyes tracing a crack in the plaster ceiling over the hospital bed. A delusional one, perhaps, but one she’d return to in a minute if she could.
‘Thanks for making that day so special,’ Esti murmurs in her half sleep, and Lili warms. She’d never made a to-do over the effort she’d put into the planning; the day was about Esti and Niko, after all. Now, Esti’s gratitude feels like a balm, smoothing the edges of her worries.
‘Of course,’ she says, but Esti is still, her expression once again slack.
Lili watches her sleep for a moment, considering how rare it is for her friend to worry. Fretting over out of control things is Lili’s area of expertise, not Esti’s. No matter, she decides. They’ll manage whatever comes their way. Together. And when the world feels like it’s closing in on them, Theo will be just the distraction they need.
The room is silent, save for the gentle rasp of Theo’s breath. Lili watches him for a while longer, letting the pull of exhaustion numb her thoughts. She nuzzles closer, her head heavy on the pillow, Esti’s body warm against hers, and succumbs, finally, to sleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Bologna
March 1941
Lili peers through the train car window, a worn copy of TheDecameron on her lap, her index finger tucked between pages to mark the place she’d left off. A speaker crackles overhead. Bologna Centrale, cinque minuti. Outside, the scenery of Emilia-Romagna scrolls by, a patchwork of pear and chestnut orchards, golden wheat fields, and terracotta rooftops. Her view looks as it always has. Idyllic. Serene.
The train’s whistle blows and Lili gathers her things, stepping a few minutes later onto the station platform. She scans the crowd. It doesn’t take long to spot her father striding towards her, waving his felt cap overhead. She waves back and jogs in his direction, and when he pulls her into a hug Lili closes her eyes, comforted by the familiar scent of his orange-menthol aftershave, by the sturdiness of his embrace.
‘You look well,’ Lili says when they part.
Her father is handsome still at fifty-two – tall, with a full head of dark hair, olive skin, and eyes the same hazel green and almond shape as Lili’s. His sideburns are speckled with more grey than she remembers, and the creases at the corners of his eyes have grown deeper, more permanent. Smile lines, her mother used to call them. The war has a way of doing this, 20Lili’s noticed – weathering even the youngest at heart.
‘And you look a little pale in the face, Babà,’ Massimo says, calling her by the nickname she’d earned when she was three years old and he caught her in the pantry, stealing bites of her mother’s famous babà sponge cake. ‘You all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ Lili nods. ‘Just a little woozy from the train.’ She kisses his cheeks. ‘I’m so happy to see you, Papà.’
‘Come, let’s get you some fresh air.’ He checks his watch. ‘And a rest. We’ve a few hours before we need to be ready.’ Tomorrow, they’ll visit Naomi’s grave, as they do each year on the anniversary of her death. Tonight, though, they’d made plans to see a new film. It’s opening night and, according to her father, the talk of the town.
Massimo throws Lili’s duffel over his shoulder and takes her arm. They make their way through the station and beneath a vaulted stone portico to a side street where the family’s old Fiat is parked.
‘So. Tell me,’ Massimo says, turning the engine over. ‘How are things in Ferrara?’
Lili shrugs. ‘Not too bad. All things considered.’
‘And your students?’
When the Racial Laws banned Jewish children from attending public school in Italy, Lili’s synagogue cobbled together a group of volunteers to give lessons in the basement of the temple; Lili teaches classes twice a week now in reading and writing.
‘They’re doing well,’ Lili tells her father, brightening. ‘It’s amazing how quickly they learn.’
‘That’s wonderful, Babà.’
Massimo slows the Fiat to let a woman cross the street, a child in tow. She doesn’t wave and Lili wonders if her husband was conscripted. Since Mussolini joined the war on the side of the Axis, there are hardly any men of fighting age on the streets anymore, she’s noticed. Unless, of course, you were Jewish and not allowed to enlist.
Lili watches the young girl as she and her mother pass. ‘I just wish there 21was an end in sight. I wish I could tell the children at the synagogue that someday they’ll go back to a real school.’ Even though there is no fighting in Italy, the country is at war now, and the prospect of a return to normal feels distant.
Massimo glances at her. ‘Life will resume as it once was,’ he says. ‘It always does. All of this, it’s only temporary.’
Lili wants badly to believe him. But with every passing month, it becomes harder to remember what normal is anymore.
As they motor on, Lili thinks back to the day she understood – or perhaps finally accepted – that things were about to change. She’d just returned from Esti’s wedding in Rhodes and Ferrara had put out an order for all Jews, Italian and foreign, to report to the town registrar for a census and new ID cards. Lili’s papers, which she’s required to carry at all times, now bear a bold red stamp above her photo: di razza ebraica. Of the Jewish Race. Not long after, Jews with foreign passports were banned entirely from living in Italy. Lili had raced through the rain to Esti and Niko’s flat when the law was announced, certain they were about to be sent back to Greece, only to find Esti stretched out on her couch with a magazine, unfazed. I won’tallow Il Duce’s theatricstogovern my life, she declared. We’re happy here at the moment. If we move home, it’ll be of our own accord. A sympathetic dean at the University of Ferrara offered to enrol Esti and Niko in graduate school – a loophole to extend their visas, he told them behind closed doors. The plan had worked, but Lili still worries it’s only a matter of time before the student exemption is repealed and they are deported.
The restrictions that followed that fall of ’38 were endless. Suddenly, it was illegal for Jews to marry non-Jews, to work in government services or at a bank, to employ Aryans, to own a radio. The list went on. When Jews were banned from holding jobs in the media, Lili lost her part-time position as junior editor at the Ferrara Daily. It’s out of my control, her boss said, but still, it came as a blow. Lili loved to write. She’d dreamt since she was a child of becoming a journalist, had spent years honing her craft. By 22the time she was let go, though, censorship and propaganda in the press had intensified to such a degree that even if she’d been allowed to stay on, there was no telling how her work would be presented. In the end, Lili told herself, it was just as well the paper no longer wanted her. She managed to find a job tending orchids at a greenhouse in the Botanical Garden. She spends her days taking soil samples or with a watering can in hand, her fingernails rimmed with dirt.
Massimo steers the Fiat through a roundabout, and Lili is brought back to the present by the sound of a car horn.
‘What about you?’ she asks. ‘How are you getting on?’
Before the manifest came into effect, Massimo owned and managed several flat buildings in Bologna. Now, he’s no longer permitted to own properties, or to operate his real estate business.
‘Actually, I have news.’
Lili turns. ‘Good news, I hope?’
‘Yes. I’ve officially signed my properties over to Settimo.’
Settimo is a family friend who lives a floor down from Massimo and who happens to be Catholic. He lost his wife, too, not long after Naomi died.
‘It’s his name attached to the deeds now,’ Massimo says. ‘He’ll sign the business back to me after the war.’
Lili exhales. ‘That is good news.’ She’d worried her father’s buildings would be confiscated by the government. That his life’s work – and savings – would disappear, as it had for others.
‘We’ve found a good rhythm, Settimo and I. He makes the rounds to collect rent, and I keep the books. I help when I can, with a broken pipe or creaky floorboard, that kind of thing.’
‘So … you’re still managing.’
‘Not on paper,’ Massimo says with a wink.
Lili frowns. ‘Be careful, Papà. The police will punish you for it if they find out.’
‘I’m careful, love. Don’t worry about me.’ 23
It’s impossible, though, not to worry. Massimo has always been in good favour with his tenants, but now … Lili thinks of the handful of friends in Ferrara who’ve distanced themselves in recent months, who see her on the street and drop their gaze, rather than stopping to say hello. What if a neighbour were to report him?
‘Here we are,’ Massimo says, pulling the Fiat into the alleyway beside their building. Lili feels her shoulders relax at the sight of the familiar stone exterior. Of home.
After a quick nap in her old bed, she finds her father seated on a stool in the den, paintbrush in hand, an easel before him. He’s mentioned in his letters that he’s taken up painting as a hobby, but Lili has yet to see his work.
‘Papà. It’s beautiful,’ she says, studying his canvas – a landscape of warm earth tones and pale blue sky. His brushstrokes are big, his colours bold. ‘Where is it?’
Massimo smiles at her over his shoulder. ‘It’s from a memory – a trip your mother and I took to Tuscany, before you were born.’
‘And I always thought Mama was the artist.’
Massimo laughs. ‘She was. I’m just playing around. I enjoy the process. Helps to turn the brain off, you know?’
Lili nods. ‘I love it.’
‘It’s yours then, when I’m finished.’ Massimo drops his paintbrush into an old coffee tin half full of linseed oil. ‘We should head out,’ he says. ‘We’ll want to get there early.’
In the theatre, Lili and Massimo chat quietly as the seats around them fill. Lili tells her father all about Theo, who’s getting bigger every day.
‘He’s a good baby,’ she says. ‘Though he eats constantly. It’s driving Esti mad.’
Massimo chuckles. ‘You were like that too. The first few months are the hardest.’
The lights in the theatre dim and the crowd quiets. Cocooned in 24darkness, Lili settles back in her seat, runs her fingers along the red velvet armrest of her chair, the prospect of being transported to another world – even if just for a short while – suddenly thrilling.
But the film, she realises as the plot begins to unfold, is not at all what they expected. The protagonist is a Jewish man – a swindler who talks his way into the job of treasurer for a prominent German duke and whose brazen schemes wreak havoc on the dukedom, nearly causing a civil war.
Lili shifts in her seat. ‘Maybe we should—’ she whispers to her father, but she’s interrupted by a hiss from the row behind them. Hush! Lili stiffens, then starts as something falls into her lap. A note, folded in two. She looks up, trying to see who’d thrown it, but it’s impossible to make out the faces in the balcony. She opens it. Though the penmanship is crude, the words are clear, even in the shadows. Death to the Jews, it reads. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots another paper being dropped from above, then another. She hands the note to her father. He reads it, crumples it slowly into his fist. She nods towards the exit, a silent plea to leave, but Massimo shakes his head.
And so, they stay, doing what they can to ignore the threats that continue to rain down from above as the film’s Jewish lead is eventually sentenced to death for raping a Christian girl. When the curtain finally closes, the audience erupts in deafening cheers. Massimo stands. He reaches for his coat.
‘Let’s go,’ he says, his voice low.
They exit the building quickly, chins tucked into their coat collars, avoiding eye contact with the patrons around them. They don’t speak until they’re several blocks from the theatre.
‘Unbelievable,’ Massimo says, tugging at his tie to loosen it.
‘Two years ago it would have been, maybe,’ Lili says. ‘Now …’
Massimo looks up, as if for an explanation, and Lili follows his gaze, staring at the night sky, thick with stars, tiny white pricks of light. The universe, once again, beautiful. Oblivious. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘I had no idea.’ 25
‘Of course you didn’t.’ Lili loops her arm through his. ‘All of this … it’s only temporary,’ she says. ‘Remember?’
Massimo looks down at her, cracks a reluctant smile. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s get home and put this night behind us.’
Lili wakes early the next morning and slips into her mother’s silk dressing gown, which she keeps in her closet for when she’s home. She pads to the kitchen, pours herself a glass of water, then surveys the pantry, hoping her father still has a store of coffee. Last week, the owner of her favourite café in Ferrara told her his supply would soon be depleted. Normally, Marco would treat Lili to a little gift when she was there. Un regalo, he’d say, setting a cannolo or crostata at her table with a playful wink. But her last visit was different. No cornetti today, Marco sighed as Lili ordered her cappuccino at the bar. Not enough flour. The army is taking most of our supplies. Pretty soon I’ll be out of coffee too. I’ll have to get creative to keep myself in business. Lili assured him she’d drink whatever concoction he invented.
Massimo’s shelves are spare, but his coffee tin, Lili is relieved to find, is a quarter full. She opens it and brings it to her nose, inhaling its rich spiced chocolate scent. Reaching for the Bialetti, she unscrews its base and fills it with water, then spoons two mounds of finely ground beans into the funnel and twists the top back on, setting the pot on the stovetop to boil. While she waits, she looks around, comforted by the familiar space – the old oak slab next to the sink with its checkerboard knife marks; the basil plant in the window; the shelf over the stove, home to a dozen mismatched espresso cups, collected from her parents’ travels. When her gaze lands on her mother’s recipe tin, she slides it to her and flips slowly through its contents, removing three thick, cream-coloured note cards. Her mother’s cursive is loose, effortless. Spaghetti carbonara. Baked aubergineparmigiana. Sweet almond babà sponge cake. Nostalgia washes over her, and Lili’s stomach growls. She tucks the cards back into the box, vowing to someday learn to cook like her mother could, once provisions are again plentiful.
‘Buon giorno.’ 26
Lili looks up to find Massimo in the doorframe. His hair is tousled, his eyes still heavy with sleep. He kisses Lili’s cheeks.
‘Buon giorno, Papà.’
‘You look like your mother in that robe.’
Lili smiles. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘It is. Sleep well?’
‘I did, for a change.’ There’s something about Lili’s room, her old bed, that knocks her out, every time. She extinguishes the flame under the coffee maker.
‘I thought we could walk the long way to the cemetery today,’ Massimo says, plucking two espresso cups from the shelf and setting them on the counter. ‘Through the Giardini Margherita.’
Lili’s favourite park. ‘Yes, let’s.’
The morning is cool. The shops – those still in business – are just opening, the street sounds swelling with the creaks of metal grates being lifted, the scratch of straw on cobblestone as doorsteps are swept clean. They enter the park and Lili absorbs the sights: the cedar tree whose low, twisted branch she’d climbed countless times as a child; the small pond, home to a family of stoic swans, their reflections marbled on the water beneath them; the catchy tune of a fiddler playing up ahead, an old fedora propped in front of him. Massimo places a few lire in the hat as they pass, and they walk on until they’ve reached the park’s main square beside the Observatory. There, they buy a bouquet of calla lilies at a flower stand, arriving twenty minutes later at the tall brick entrance of the cemetery.
‘Here we are,’ Massimo says.
They walk silently along a pebbled path towards Naomi’s plot, and as they near, Lili’s chest fills with a familiar, hollow ache. Four years. Some days it feels longer. Others, it’s as if no time has passed at all. Her grief has ebbed since her mother’s death, but there are times, still, when the emptiness sets in and the ground beneath her feels unsteady, as if she’s just stepped off a boat and her equilibrium is shaky. 27
They slow to a stop at Naomi’s plot. A simple granite headstone reads
Naomi Giuliana Passigli
1885–1937
Beloved Wife and Mother
Below that, her favourite saying To live is to dream.
Vivere è sognare
Massimo hands the bouquet to Lili. ‘Go ahead.’
Lili kneels. She props the flowers carefully against the grave. Her throat closes as she presses her hand to the stone, its grey marble cold and smooth against her palm. I miss you, Mama. When she stands, she and her father take their usual places on a stone bench across the path.
It’s quiet in the cemetery. They are the only visitors, save for a restless sparrow, branch-hopping in a cypress overhead.
‘You’re wearing the necklace she gave you,’ Massimo says.
Lili reaches for the pendant, rubs it between her fingers. ‘I was wondering if you’d notice.’
She was home from university when her mother asked her, despite her protests, to fetch her jewellery box. Naomi’s hands shook as she pulled the delicate gold chain from its velvet sack. This one is special, she said, dropping the necklace into Lili’s palm. Lili hadn’t seen it before. My mother brought it back for me from Jerusalem. Lili vaguely recalled the story of how her maternal grandparents, whom she’d never met, had travelled with a group of friends to the holy city before the Great War. It’s a coin, see? her mother said. The flower is the blossom of an almond tree. A symbol of hope. Wear this, my love, when you need a lift.
Lili leans into her father, rests her head on his shoulder. He never talks about the void Naomi left behind in his life, but she knows it must be impossibly deep. She isn’t an expert on marriage, or love – at least, she’s never been in love – but what her parents shared was profound, of this 28much she’s certain. Theirs was a quiet kind of love, constant as a river current. She could hear it in their gentle exchange of words, could see it in the way Naomi tilted her head when Massimo was talking so he knew he was being heard, in the way Massimo watched her go about her business from across the room, his eyes filled with affection.
‘It gets a little easier in some ways, as the years pass,’ Lili says after a while. ‘But I miss her so much still.’
Massimo takes her hand. His fingers are warm to the touch, as they always are. ‘So do I, Babà. So do I.’
CHAPTER THREE
Ferrara
April 1941
‘Are you sure you want to hold him?’ Esti asks, buttoning her blouse. ‘There’s a good chance he’ll spit up on you.’
Theo, four months old, is propped on Esti’s lap, his head at her knees. He looks up at his mother, eyes halfmast in a post-feed stupor. He eats on a civilised schedule now and sleeps through the night, and as a result, Esti has regained her sanity.
Lili’s weekend bag is propped in the doorway. She and Esti are set to leave in an hour for a quick getaway to the beach. ‘I have plenty of spare clothes,’ she says. ‘And I don’t mind a little spit- up.’
‘Well then, he’s all yours.’
Esti drapes a quilted cotton cloth on Lili’s shoulder and passes Theo over. Lili cradles his head in the palm of one hand, his torso in the other, and brings him to her chest, feeling the weight of his cheek, the down of his hair against her collarbone. She pats his back to coax a burp from him, his malted-milk scent as inebriating as a glass of brandy.
‘You can be more assertive than that.’ Esti laughs. ‘He won’t break.’
Lili pats a little harder, rubs a circle in the tiny space between his shoulder blades. 30
Theo’s been winning the hearts of everyone he meets, friends and strangers alike, with his mother’s deep blue eyes and his father’s wide, dimpled grin. Every few days, he learns something new. Most recently he’s discovered that with enough effort, he can roll himself from his belly onto his back – after which he flaps his arms and legs in celebration, babbling with satisfaction.
Theo lets out a loud belch, and Lili feels his stomach soften. She lifts him overhead, triumphant. He laughs, and a spool of drool spills onto Lili’s lap.
‘Excuse you!’ Lili says, nestling him into the curve of her elbow. She dabs his lips, then at her skirt, with a corner of the burp cloth.
‘Sorry,’ Esti says, wrinkling her nose.
‘No apologies. I volunteered for this.’
Esti gives one of Theo’s earlobes a gentle tug. ‘You love your Aunt Lili, don’t you, amore.’
‘Especially after a feed,’ Lili says. Theo looks from his mother to Lili and then to his hands, staring at them wide-eyed. ‘Wait until you find your toes,’ Lili teases.
Theo claps his hands and Lili wonders how old he’ll be before he meets his grandparents. Esti had hoped to visit Rhodes last month to introduce Theo to her family, but travel is impossible now with another front of the war raging, this one between Italy and Greece. Tensions between the two countries are high. Is the world trying to tell us we should be enemies? Esti had mused at first, though the humour subsided when Hitler ramped up his troops in the Balkans, making a German attack on Greece seem imminent.
With a trip to Greece on hold, Esti suggested a weekend with Lili at the beach. I’m desperate to get my feet in the sand, she said. Lili jumped at the idea, booking them a room at a resort in Rimini where she and her parents used to holiday. Niko agreed to stay home with Theo, and Esti stockpiled enough milk through the black market to last him a few days.
‘You sure Niko will be all right on his own?’ Lili asks.
‘I’m sure. It’ll do him good.’ 31
Lili glances at Esti. Niko was out a lot before Theo was born; now, she’s lucky to cross paths with him once in a week. She’s wanted to ask about his strange absences but hasn’t had the courage to do so. ‘Is everything okay with Niko, Es?’ she ventures.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know, I just feel like he’s hardly around anymore.’
Esti pauses, and Lili can see in the tight curve of her lips that it’s a sensitive subject. ‘He’s been busy.’
‘I don’t mean to pry—’ Lili starts, but Esti interrupts her.
‘No, no, it’s all right. I didn’t want to say anything yet,’ Esti says. ‘He’s been … trying to figure a way to move his family to Italy. He found an organisation helping Jews cross the border. It’s called Delasem.’
Lili’s heard of the group, the Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants.
‘Oh.’ Lili tries to mask the hurt in her voice. Why hadn’t Esti told her sooner? ‘I had no idea.’
‘He’s been discreet about it. And now with the fighting in Greece, it’s all a mess. He’s still determined to sort something. It’s just … a lot more complicated.’
‘I’m sure,’ Lili concedes. But why, she ponders, would Niko want to move his family to Italy now, when foreign Jews without student exemptions like Esti’s and Niko’s are being incarcerated in the south – or forced to live al confino, under house arrest in small villages where they’re forbidden to hold jobs and required to check in daily with the local authorities? Even if they could make it safely onto Italian soil, how would they be allowed to stay without visas? Would they need to hide?
‘I thought Delasem was helping to get Jewish refugees out of Italy, not in,’ she says.
‘For the most part they are. But Niko’s got close with one of their correspondents, who seems to think he can help. We’ll see.’
A key rattles in the flat door, and Niko emerges a moment later from the hallway, his knees streaked with dirt. 32
Esti stands to kiss his cheeks. ‘Hello, handsome.’
Niko flops down next to Lili on the couch, and Theo smiles when he sees him, punching at the air. ‘Practising your boxing again, I see, little man. Fierce one, aren’t you?’ Niko growls, baring his teeth, and Theo burbles, delighted.
‘How was the game?’ Esti asks.
It’s the first warm Saturday in April, and as Jews are no longer allowed at the tennis club, Niko and a few friends had organised a game of pickup football at the Botanical Gardens.
‘Muddy. But fun,’ Niko says, then adds, ‘Your boyfriend was there,’ winking at Lili.
Lili’s cheeks warm. ‘Daniel is not my boyfriend.’
Niko grins. ‘Depends who you ask.’
A few weeks before, Niko and Esti had arranged a double date with Lili and one of Niko’s friends from university. They’d met for dinner. Daniel is from Poland, staying on in Italy with Esti’s and Niko’s same student exemption. Lili had seen him a few times before on campus, had found him good looking in an understated sort of way. They got along well at that first dinner. Daniel walked her home and kissed her goodnight, and Lili went to bed thinking how long it had been since she’d taken interest in a boy, how nice it had felt to be kissed. They’d met twice since then, for a movie and for a walk and a picnic on the bastioni, where they shared stories about their studies, their travels, their childhoods, and where Daniel confided in Lili his anxiety about his family back in his hometown of Lodz. Lili had listened with alarm as he spoke of how his parents and two young sisters were evicted from their home and forced to live in a walled-off Jewish quarter. A ghetto.
‘Are you excited for your boys’ weekend?’ Lili asks Niko, eager to change the subject.
‘We sure are,’ Niko says. He scoops Theo from her arms and stands, spinning him around in a circle. 33
Lili and Esti arrive in Rimini just before sunset, in a borrowed convertible Alfa Romeo. They’d spent the first half of the drive motoring east towards Porto Garibaldi, the second with the radio blaring, pelting out the lyrics to Carlo Buti and Alberto Rabagliati hits as they sped south down the coast to on-again, off-again views of the blue-green Adriatic. By the time they pull into the circular drive of the Grand Hotel, their throats are dry and their hair a mess, but they don’t mind. They’re on vacation.
A bellman approaches, opens Lili’s door, and greets her warmly as she steps out of the car. Underfoot, square grey paving stones align at perfect right angles, giving Lili a welcome sense of order. She takes a long, slow breath, savouring the saltinfused air, its familiar scent transporting her immediately to her childhood. Rimini’s long, sandy shoreline is dotted every hundred metres or so with rows of parasols in red and yellow and green, depending on the hotel that owns them. Lili’s family used to spend two weeks every summer at the Grand Hotel, until Naomi became too sick to travel, and without discussing it, their holidays in Rimini quietly ceased. Tomorrow, Lili decides, she’ll wake early, as her parents used to, to claim a couple of chairs close to the water.
‘I don’t think I can wait,’ Esti says. ‘Let’s go get our feet wet.’ She turns to the bellman. ‘Would you mind holding our bags in the lobby?’
Within minutes, Lili and Esti are barefoot in the sand, their blouses ballooning behind them in a steady breeze. They spread their arms and jog to the water’s edge, leaping as the waves break at their toes, and then gather up their skirts and wade through the shallow surf, letting the cold splash up their shins.
‘I feel better already,’ Esti says, tilting her head back and closing her eyes.
Lili threads her arm through Esti’s. ‘Me too.’
They watch the gulls ride the wind, taking turns to divebomb the sea. Esti cheers when one of them surfaces with a minnow pinned in its beak. Lili had packed her bathing suit and wonders now if she’ll be brave enough to swim. The days have grown warmer since the start of spring, but the 34water is chilly. They could have waited until summer to come, though with everything in constant flux, Lili had figured it was better to book now. It’s nice, she decides, to have the beach to themselves.
She spots a flat, round stone and picks it up, turns, and sidearms it into the sea as her father had taught her to when she was little. It skips four times before disappearing into the blue abyss beneath it.
‘Impressive,’ Esti says, an eyebrow raised. She glances over her shoulder towards the hotel. ‘I’m hungry. Let’s shower, have a bite at the bar. We can watch the sunset and pretend all’s right in the world.’
‘The name is Passigli,’ Lili tells the clerk behind the check-in desk.
‘Certainly.’ The clerk smiles politely. ‘Could I bother you for your identification card?’
Lili slides her ID across the counter. ‘I called ahead to reserve the room,’ she says.
The clerk picks up the card, hesitates. ‘I’m … so sorry, Miss Passigli,’ he says, his smile suddenly strained. He pushes her ID back to her, motioning the bellman over. ‘As it turns out, we’re full tonight.’
‘What? That’s impossible,’ Lili says.
The clerk shifts his weight. ‘Again, I’m terribly sorry.’ He whispers something to the bellman, who disappears, then returns a moment later carrying Lili’s and Esti’s suitcases.
‘Wait – there must be some confusion,’ Lili pleads.
But the clerk shakes his head. ‘I’m afraid not.’
Behind her, Lili hears Esti laugh. ‘Unbelievable,’ she mutters, and suddenly Lili knows. The hotel isn’t full. They’re just not welcome. A small part of her had worried that they’d be turned away – there were public parks and private clubs closed now to Jews – but the Grand Hotel was her hotel. It catered to a Jewish clientele.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Lili says. ‘My family’s been coming here for twenty years.’
The manager of the resort used to greet Lili’s parents personally when 35they arrived. She racks her memory for his name, whispering it to herself as it comes to her. Arturo. ‘I’d like to speak to your manager,’ she says. ‘Where is Arturo?’
‘Arturo doesn’t work here any longer.’
Of course. Arturo was Jewish. Heat rises up Lili’s neck. How could she possibly sway this man? She could offer him some lire. Ask to speak with the new manager. But she knows her money, her words, are worthless. All that matters to him is the red stamp on her identification card. Beside her, Esti picks up a newspaper from the corner of the concierge’s desk, the latest issue of La Vita Italiana. The headline at the top reads: beware of the Jews in our home.
Lili glances through the glass doors, where their car is still parked, its boot open, their luggage already stowed back inside. She returns her ID to her purse.
Esti moves to stand beside Lili. ‘We’ve come all this way, signore,’ she tells the clerk. ‘What possible harm would it do to honour our reservation and take our money?’
‘It’s not my decision to make, Miss,’ the clerk says.
‘Whose decision is it exactly?’ Esti asks, her tone sharp.
The clerk tenses. ‘I already told Miss Passigli–’
‘I heard exactly what you told her.’
‘I’m sorry, but–’
‘But what? Show me the law that prevents us from being guests here.’
The clerk stands a little straighter. ‘It’s hotel policy,’ he says evenly. ‘You need to leave.’
‘Oh, I see!’ Esti feigns surprise. ‘You’ve been brainwashed, like the rest of them. Do you think that makes you a better Italian? A better Christian? I feel sorry for you.’
A pair of well-dressed middle- aged women appear in the lobby. Lili takes Esti’s arm. ‘It’s okay,’ she says softly. ‘This is my fault.’
Esti shakes her head. ‘It’s not your fault. And it is not okay. It’s preposterous.’ 36
The women behind them, who’d been chatting, grow quiet.
The clerk motions to the door. ‘If you don’t leave now, I’ll call the police.’
‘On what grounds?’ Esti balks.
‘You are disturbing the peace.’
Esti glares at the man, leans over his desk. ‘How do you sleep at night?’
The clerk blanches.
‘Your stupid policies may mean something at this particular moment in time, but what do you think’s going to happen when the war is over? You think any of your customers who are – no longer welcome – will come back? I have news for you, arsehole: they won’t.’
Lili’s legs go weak. ‘All right, enough,’ she says. ‘Let’s go.’ She moves towards the hotel entrance, pulling Esti with her.
‘To hell with this place,’ Esti fumes. She’s still holding the news paper. She waves it once overhead then drops it with a flourish into a rubbish bin by the door.
Lili looks over her shoulder, watches as the women stare, as the clerk reaches for his telephone. ‘I’ll drive,’ she says once they’re outside. She’s shaking as she climbs into the Alfa Romeo. She takes a breath, willing her pulse to slow. ‘You can’t do that,’ she whispers, staring through the windshield.
‘Do what? Stand up for what’s right?’
‘You can’t unleash like that.’
‘You expect me to just – sit back and let them roll over us? Their rules, their policies – it’s sickening.’
‘I agree. But–’ She glances inside. The clerk is at his desk, the telephone receiver still to his ear. A siren wails in the distance. Merda. They should leave quickly. She turns the ignition key, reaches for the gear shift, and the Alfa Romeo lurches forward. In her rearview mirror, Lili can see the bellman watching them go. Esti rolls down her window as they exit the hotel drive.
‘Fucker!’ she shouts, waving a fist. Lili steps on the gas. 37
She drives until the sirens have dissipated.
‘You nearly got us both arrested,’ Lili says.
‘He was never going to call the police.’
‘He had the phone to his ear.’
‘It was all a show.’
‘You don’t know that. You heard the siren.’
‘We did nothing wrong, Lili.’
‘Don’t you get it?’ Lili cries, no longer able to contain herself. ‘It doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong! The streets aren’t safe anymore. People are getting arrested and deported, for much less than shouting a profanity. For stating an opinion. They’re getting beaten. In public. Last week I watched a pack of boys swarm a rabbi outside the synagogue and pelt him with rocks. The townspeople just watched.’
‘I’d have murdered them,’ Esti says.
‘Exactly. That’s my point.’
Esti sets her jaw. ‘I won’t live in a world where I can’t speak my mind. I refuse to believe I’m unworthy. I won’t raise my son to believe he’s unworthy. What kind of a life is that?’
‘Goddammit, Esti!’ Lili slams the steering wheel with her palm, surprising herself, and Esti too. ‘It’s not forever! It’s just until all of this blows over. I’m as angry as you are. It’s infuriating, what’s going on around us. But nothing good will come of ranting about it in public. You have to understand that.’
Lili’s mind flashes to Esti, at a gelateria, chewing out the owner for not removing the graffiti by the door that read No Dogs or Jews Allowed; to Esti cursing at a woman at the table next to theirs at Café Savona when she overheard her claiming the Jews were an ‘evil race’; to Esti ripping an anti-Semitic poster from the facade of the town hall and tearing it in half as a small crowd of passersby watched.
‘Please. Just try, for once, to think before you speak,’ Lili says. ‘To temper yourself. If not for your sake or for my sake, then for Theo’s. He needs you. You aren’t just responsible for yourself any longer, Es.’ 38
Lili’s words land like stones, creating a heavy barrier in the space between her and Esti. Esti stares out her window, and Lili wonders if she should apologise, though she’d meant all of what she said. She could have conveyed it in a kinder way, perhaps, but would Esti have heard her?
They drive in silence. Darkness begins to fall, and still, they don’t speak. Lili switches on the car’s headlights.
It’s not until they’re nearing Ferrara that Esti finally says, ‘I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut. You know this about me.’
Lili glances at her, then back at the road. ‘I know. But you have to try. If you explode on the wrong person … it won’t end well.’
Esti sighs.
‘Please tell me you’ll try.’
‘I’ll try. It won’t be easy though.’
Lili feels her grip on the steering wheel soften, the colour return to her knuckles. ‘Thank you,’ she breathes. ‘I’m going to hold you to that.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Ferrara
September 1941
It’s the eve of Rosh Hashanah, a Sunday. Lili rolls a loose thread at the hem of her sleeve between the pads of her thumb and forefinger. She’d agreed to meet Esti and Niko at the synagogue, but they haven’t arrived yet and the benches in the women’s upstairs gallery are filling quickly. It’s not Esti’s seat she’s worried about though – Lili’s coat will do for now to hold it – but the pinch she feels at the base of her gut when she and Niko are late.
Every few days now, there is an incident – a Jew harassed in the street, a new swath of graffiti debasing a shop front. Last week, Lili bumped into an old school friend, Mia, whose older brother, Giorgio, was detained for no apparent reason; a few days later, he disappeared. They won’t tell us anything, Mia said of the carabinieri who’d made the arrest, and all Lili could say was I’m so sorry.
Since their fight on the car ride home from Rimini, Esti, at least, has held true to her word, keeping her wits about her in public and airing her grievances only behind closed doors. It’s Niko that Lili worries most about now. Not just because he’s absent – he’s still out all the time – but because when Lili’s around him, he’s a different person. She noticed the shift in April, when the German army invaded his hometown of Salonica. 40His parents wrote soon after. Life under Nazi occupation, they said, was unsustainable. To leave was impossible. Niko didn’t take this news well. As the weeks passed and the letters from Salonica grew more dire, he retreated into himself. His features darkened. The sound of his laugh became a thing of the past. Now, unless he’s bouncing Theo on his knee, he’s stopped smiling entirely. He’s scared. And angry. Lili’s heart aches for him, and for his parents too – she’d met Stella and Otello at Esti and Niko’s wedding, can picture them standing misty- eyed beside their son, glasses raised in a toast.
Originally, Niko’s plan was to get Delasem to help bring his parents to Italy. Now, he’s begun talking about going to Greece himself to retrieve them. This seemed to Lili a terrible idea. The risk involved in crossing into German territory – or out of it, for that matter – felt too great. But others were doing it, Niko argued. Daniel, for one. A few weeks ago, Daniel had told Lili he was leaving for Poland. My father’s been begging me to come home, he said. He has a sister in England, he’s trying to secure a way out of the ghetto. He needs my help. They both knew it wasn’t safe to travel across borders. He promised to write. They’d keep in touch, they said. Lili had written to him once, but she’s yet to receive a reply.
She checks her watch. Behind her, the temple balcony is crowded, the benches full; a dozen women now stand at the back. She turns, keeps her eyes down to avoid glares, tells herself not to worry. Niko and Daniel are smart men. And who is she to judge their decisions to try to help their families? Her father is nearby and safe. She’s lucky.
‘There you are.’
Lili looks up at the familiar voice and exhales, reaching for her coat as Esti shuffles towards her. ‘You made it,’ she says, tucking the loose thread back into her sleeve.
