Then as I lie in bed, with thoughts flying around my head, a brilliant idea comes to me: I don’t have to give him up. I will introduce Angelo as an Italian orphan, his mother a casualty of the war. I adopted him and I’m taking him with me back to England. I could escape now, at least as far as Switzerland—if the Swiss are still taking in refugees, of course. But I can’t leave without saying goodbye to Leo. I must wait for him to return first. I worry about him. Why did he have to leave in such a hurry when he had assured me he was in a protected occupation and his family was valuable to the war effort?

September 24, 1941

Today was the Regata Storica—the historical regatta that takes place at this time every year. Crews in period costume rowing enormous gondolas up the Grand Canal. Boats of all sizes. In spite of the war, it was still as well attended as ever, with people cheering for their favourites. Except the vendors were not present selling balloons and gelato. And the army and police were watching from the shadows. As the races ended and I headed for home, I was stopped at a checkpoint. “Identity card?” I was asked.

I pulled it out and showed them. I had deliberately made it rather the worse for wear, crumpling the photograph so that nobody could see it wasn’t me. The officer stared at it, then up at me.

“This is you?” he demanded.

“Of course.” I stared at him.

“The hair is darker.”

“I dyed it once. Now it’s my own colour.”

“You were born in Venice?”

“I was.”

He was still frowning. “There is something about you. Not right. You will present yourself at the questura in the morning, do you understand?”

“I have a young baby. I can’t leave him.”

“Bring him. We will need to see his birth certificate and identification.”

He held out his hand. “Give me your identity card. You will have it returned to you in the morning if all is well.”

I don’t know how I made it home safely. I was shaking. They would check my identity card and find out that I was a fraud—an enemy alien in their midst. They might even search my flat and find the radio under the floorboards. They shot spies, didn’t they? Until now I hadn’t really felt that I could be in any danger. Now I realized the full enormity of what might happen to me. Then suddenly I stopped short in the middle of a bridge, causing a man walking behind me to bump into me and utter some not too polite words.