‘Something to do with the funeral director,’ lied Vittore.
There was no trouble with the undertaker. Vittore knew that because he had handled all the arrangements himself. Fabio was off somewhere, doing something he shouldn’t. That was for sure. If he screwed up, today of all days, then Vittore promised himself he would kick Fabio’s stupid arse from here to the moon. ‘There were one or two things to be straightened out, that’s all.’
The doorbell rang, and Vittore went to answer it. A moment later, he returned, followed by Bianca – dressed in black today, not her usual white. She embraced Bella, who started to cry.
‘This is breaking my heart,’ she said.
‘I know, Mama. I know,’ said Bianca.
Maria appeared in the doorway. Pretty, curvy, dark-haired. Bianca went and hugged her briefly.
Bella ignored her daughter-in-law. ‘I don’t want Fabby to be late,’ she fretted. She was wondering whether she had done the right thing, phoning Ruby Darke. And she wondered whether the woman would even bother to show up.
‘He won’t be, Mama. Don’t worry,’ said Vittore.
Don’t worry! Bella had spent her lifetime worrying over her family, trying to maintain an iron hold over them. She couldn’t alter her ways. And now Tito was gone to join his father Astorre in heaven. In her mind’s eye, Bella always pictured her Astorre as he’d been way back in the days when they’d been young, and still living in their proper home, their true home – Napoli.
Naples, 1925
Bella came out of the church feeling deliriously happy. She was blinking in the blaring sunlight, her laughter drowned out by noisy trumpeters as friends and family showered her and her new husband with rice. Bella beamed up at Astorre, her groom. Astorre Danieri had done the decent thing and married her, his childhood sweetheart, and she loved him dearly.
‘Bellisima!’ everyone yelled at the bride.
Bella was twenty years old and for the first time in her life she felt beautiful. Astorre was twenty, too – and Bella was already pregnant, having succumbed to Astorre in one of her father’s olive groves and allowed him to lift her skirts and have her. Only once, it had happened – Bella always afterwards blamed the heat for her weakness that day, for why else would a good Catholic girl lie with a man unwed?
When she told Astorre of her condition, he shrugged. He’d half-expected this would happen: he was a stud – a stallion, the girls said of him in tones of admiration – and it came as no surprise to him that his arrow had found its mark. ‘We’ll marry,’ he said, and went immediately to see her father.
