‘Of course,’ said Cosima. ‘I’m curious to see what it is like.’
‘Now, your father is Panfilo Pallavicini?’ Romina asked Rosa.
‘One and the same,’ Rosa replied proudly. That was something Cosima couldn’t lay claim to.
‘Why don’t you sit down and join us?’
‘Some of us have to work,’ said Rosa, making a face at her cousin.
‘Then I’ll get Luca another coffee,’ said Cosima calmly. ‘It’ll be my pleasure. Would you like anything else, signora?’
‘No, thank you,’ said Romina.
Romina and Rosa sat chatting together for an hour, their heads almost touching. The girls ran around the quay with the other children who played there. Luca wondered what Claire would think of them mixing with the locals. Cosima brought his coffee but was unable to join them, as people needed to be served. Rosa deliberately left her cousin to take all the orders. It was about time she pulled her weight, she thought. Toto appeared for the evening shift, a spring in his stride because his daughter was restored to him. His eyes took in her new radiance as if he had never seen anything so beautiful.
The girls had found a couple of skinny mongrels and were chasing them up and down the waterfront. Cosima weaved gracefully through the tables, smiling at the locals, accepting their compliments with poise as they told her how pretty she looked now that she was no longer wearing black. Every now and then she turned and caught Luca watching her and her eyes softened. He was grateful that Rosa was distracting his mother, so he could savour those moments.
‘Come to the palazzo with your father when he photographs it,’ Romina urged Rosa. ‘It would give me such pleasure to show you around. Bring your mother, too. I would love to meet her.’
‘I don’t think Mamma will ever step foot in that place again. She said it gave her the creeps.’
‘Oh, all that was a long time ago, surely. Do ask her.’
Romina called the girls and they got up to go. Luca’s eyes lingered on Cosima a moment then he was gone, taking her smile with him.
The following morning Cosima attended Mass. She took comfort from the embracing walls of the church and the invisible presence of God among the flickering candles and iconography. Was Francesco there, too, as he had apparently been during the Festa di Santa Benedetta? He’d be nearly ten now, not the little boy he had been when the sea had swept him away. She couldn’t imagine him with big feet and long legs and a deep, gravelly voice. In her memory his skin would always be silky, more familiar to her than her own, his hair smelling of vanilla, his eyes gazing at her as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world. He used to stroke her face. ‘Mamma, you smell nice,’ he would say, winding his arms around her neck and nuzzling her like a puppy. Her body ached with yearning to hold him again, to bury her nose in his neck and inhale the scent of his hair, to hear his laughter bubble up from his belly. She remembered the white feather he had been playing with on the beach and the wind that had whisked it away. She remembered him wading out to retrieve it. She’d never forget the moment he had lost his balance . . .
She opened her prayer book and focused on the words as best she could through her tears. The church was full, the priest chanting in Latin, incense rising from the thurible. She had made a pact with God the day of the festa: if Jesus wept blood she would accept that her son was with Him in Heaven. If He didn’t, she would give herself to the sea because she couldn’t bear to live knowing that she would never see him again. How strange, then, that Jesus’s dry eyes had brought her Luca and a message from Francesco. God did indeed work in mysterious ways.
After Mass, she waited until the church was empty, then approached the table at the front where rows of little candles flickered eerily through the remains of incense that lingered in the warm air. As she reached for a candle she noticed a long white feather lying across the back of the table. She was quite alone. She picked it up and twirled it between her fingers. Was someone playing a cruel prank? Or was it evidence that her son was trying to communicate with her?
The priest walked down the aisle towards her, noticing the pretty cream dress beneath her black shawl. ‘Hello, Cosima, are you all right?’
She held out the feather, her hand trembling. ‘Did you find this here after the festa?’
Father Filippo knitted his bushy white eyebrows. ‘No, I haven’t seen it before. I don’t believe we’ve had a bird in the church and besides, that’s a rather large feather, isn’t it?’
‘Francesco loved feathers.’
‘Then consider it a message from God,’ said the priest. ‘Miracles happen every day, my child. Much of the time we dismiss them as coincidence or luck.’