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of a couple of pounds a week. We didn’t get much for that: one bed for the two of us, a small kitchen corridor and a little toilet. We didn’t have a bath or a shower. We’d go to Nan’s house to have a really decent wash. If not, we used to have to go to the public showers. I’d grip Mum’s hand as we stood in line to take our turn under the water. It didn’t matter what time or what day we were there, the water was always freezing cold: almost refreshing in the summer but cruel in winter.
    It was about a fifteen-minute ride on the number 7 or number 12 tram and then a ten-minute walk from the Quarto Oggiaro over to Nan’s where I still saw my dad. He was always smiling when he saw me and I loved it. I wanted to hug him for ever. Yet, in a little kid way, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t see him every day. Didn’t he love me as much as I loved him?
    He wouldn’t be seen dead at our place, the poorest area in the city. He drove a chocolate-coloured Porsche – this one was paid for – and lived in a really exclusive area. ‘Why are we like this, and my dad has got all that?’ I wondered.
    He took me to meet Daniella, one of his girlfriends, who had a son about my age. We went to a toyshop and he told us to choose something. I was used to having the cheapestthings and picked a little dressing table with make-up and hairbrushes. The lad picked a powered pedal car that you sat in – it would have cost a fortune. I liked my dressing table but later the family teased me that the lad’s present was much better than mine and I got fed up with my dad about that.
    Mum was the star. She worked all hours at the Upim market, which sold everything, a sort of mini Tesco. She did shifts to work around my school timetable.
    I didn’t speak English, only Italian. I understood ‘sit down’ and ‘thank you’ but Mum only spoke Italian to me. She wanted me to belong. We had picture books, Pinocchio, Alice in Wonderland and other kids’ stories. The teachers made you eat courgettes and go to sleep in the afternoon and I hated all of that. They’d prop up cot beds and we had to lie there for about forty-five minutes and have a little sleep. I pretended I was asleep because you’d get told off if you moved or said a word.
    We had white overalls and each class had its own different-coloured little collar – mine was red and orange. The overalls would be various shades and sizes, some better, some worse, depending on where you bought them, but you had to have them on top of your normal clothes. It was like any school uniform, an attempt to stop there being any ‘them’ and ‘us’ in the class or playground. Most of the kids were deprived anyway for it was that sort of neighbourhood, and on the stifling hot days of summer that left you breathless it could smell like a bad Spanish holiday.
    For Carnival Day on 17 February I always had to borrow an outfit from Auntie Angela. She got the costume and I had to borrow it. Whatever she had, I wouldn’t get a choice. I was a fairy one time when I was very little. One year I got a Spanish flamenco costume that Angela had never worn and I was very happy; that was special.
    The school was a five-minute walk from home and Mum would drop me off just before 8 a.m. when lessons and her Upim shift began. It was all co-ordinated. I finished school at 1.30 p.m., just as Mum’s first shift ended, so she picked me up and we’d go to Nan’s, then she went back to work until 7 p.m. Nobody from school ever came back to my nan’s. Mum kept that part of our life separate. Classmates would visit at Mum’s. Her friend Linda’s daughter Simona was in my class and her son Luca was a little younger. I played ball and rode my bike with them and a lot of other kids in the yard at the Mussolini flats.
    I also caught nits, one of the neighbourhood hazards. I heard Mum saying, ‘Marisa, you’re not going to like this but I’ve no choice,’ and the next thing huge clumps of hair, my long,