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endless time, he heard her reemerge and creep out onto the landing, where she paused outside his door. He held his breath and prayed that she wouldn’t look in. Then he heard her go downstairs. Cautiously, he poked his head out of his bedroom window, which overlooked the terrace, and saw her flit across the dark garden. Within minutes he was following her.
    As he drew near to the shed, he crouched low in the bushes. The sight of his mother in conversation with three armed men gave his stomach a lurch of fear mixed with excitement. He was pretty sure who they were. The Partisans. The men whom he had admired so much and for so long but had never met until last night. And now here they were, armed, in his own back garden. He couldn’t imagine why they were here or what business they could possibly have with his mother. He strained his ears to hear, but it was no good; they were speaking too softly. When Rosemary hurried back to the house, he watched the men set off into the darkness. He waited a few more minutes. Then, not thinking about why he was doing it, he followed them, keeping well into the shadows of the trees that bordered the path.
    After skirting the side road to the farm where Maria’s brother lived, the way continued sharply upward, past the terraced vines that sprawled out across the hillside. The path became stonier, hardly a path at all, winding up into the dense scrub and olive trees that grew on the higher ground. Paolo was painfully aware of his every footfall. And he was terrified of what would happen if the men turned around and spotted him. But he knew these hills well. He had roamed around them since childhood, and he had a good idea of where these men were heading. Somewhere up here, the path ran alongside a deep gully with a dried-up riverbed, very overgrown. It was an ideal place for a camp hideout.
    He had kept the men in sight, but then, quite suddenly, he lost them. Sweating with exhaustion, he paused and peered ahead. There was no sign of them. They had vanished.
    Paolo stood still in the darkness. There was no sound except for the rustling of dry grass. Fear came down on him like a cold hand. Before, he had hardly thought about the risk he was running by following the men onto the lonely hillside in the middle of the night. Now he remembered those rifles, and the stories of the kind of treatment the Partisans handed out to spies. Despite his fear, a plan formed in his mind — but now was not the time to put it into action. He turned around and scrambled back the way he had come, expecting at every turn to meet an armed figure looming up at him out of the darkness, perhaps even a man with the eyes of a fox.

I t was after three o’clock in the morning when Paolo reached home. He was exhausted. Rosemary had locked the house up again, so there was nothing he could do but stay out all night and appear just before breakfast, pretending he had gone for an early-morning stroll. He hoped his disheveled state would not arouse suspicion. For what was left of the night, he huddled down on one of the garden seats on the veranda.
    He was dozing there when, three short hours later, his mother came across him as she stepped out into the early-morning sunshine. He was amazed at how normal she seemed, considering the events of a few hours ago.
    “Up early, Paolo?”
    “Yes. I’ve been for a bike ride.”
    “Good. Now, I want you and Constanza to cycle into Florence this morning. There’s a chance of some bread and pasta in the market today and maybe some vegetables and cheese. It’s too much for Maria to carry. Hurry up and have your breakfast, then you can start right away before it gets too hot.”
    Paolo was drooping with exhaustion as he slowly assembled the shopping baskets and got out his bike. Constanza appeared reluctant to leave. She came out of the house slowly, wearing one of Babbo’s old cotton shirts, her feet thrust into a pair of leather sandals.
    “I suppose I’ve got to ride Maria’s