I had stipend money until next summer. And the child would be born when? Nine months, wasn’t it? How little I knew about pregnancy and birth. But I remember when one of the farm girls in our village was expecting. All the talk. All the speculation about who the father was and why he wasn’t marrying her. And I remembered gossips going back nine months to try and work out who Lil had been seeing at that time. I did a rapid calculation in my head: end of April, beginning of May. I felt a glimmer of hope. Nine months. I could stay here, continue to take my classes if they’d let me. Then I’d have the baby, give it up for adoption and go home with nobody any the wiser. I’d write and tell my mother that everyone had reassured me that Venice would be perfectly safe and it made more sense for me to stay put and finish my course, rather than risk the journey home at this moment. Besides, with any luck, the war would be over by next summer. I knew she’d be angry about this, but it seemed like the only solution.

I rather surprised myself how dispassionately I was handling this. I suppose I was desperately trying to keep fear at bay—fear and despair. I was no longer that emotional girl who burst into tears easily. I had learned to shut off my emotions long ago. I hadn’t cried when I was told I had to leave art college, because I saw how terrified my mother was, and my father so ill. I hadn’t even cried when he died, because my mother was hysterical enough for both of us. So I thought I had forgotten how to feel—until Leo had made me feel alive again and I had experienced love. I couldn’t even begin to think how I’d tell him about this. What if he denied it was his? Cut me dead? I couldn’t make any decisions right now. If only I had someone I could tell, someone close I could talk to at this moment. But there was nobody.

So I went back to the accademia. I attended my classes. I found if I carried a bottle of fizzy water and some dry crackers that I could avert much of the sickness. The trick was to keep something in my stomach at all times, and then eat nothing too spicy or rich. I started having a clear vegetable soup with croutons for lunch at the local trattoria. It was based with chicken stock and quite nourishing. I also found some biscuits like little sponge cakes that seemed to agree with my stomach.

September 21