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safety. The Grenellis were their friends and if they were in trouble then Rosie and Christine should be there to help them if they could, or share it with them if they couldn’t.
    ‘What the bleedin’ hell…?’ Rosie heard her mother suddenly exclaim sharply, both of them coming to an abrupt halt as they saw Constable Black shepherding Giovanni, Carlo and Aldo out through the Grenellis’ front door.
    Rosie’s stomach tightened with shocked disbelief when she saw Giovanni, the once proud head of his household, looking so shrunken and old and, even worse, so very frighteningly vulnerable. As she and her mother hurried up to them Rosie could see the tears on his lined cheeks.
    ‘What’s going on?’ Christine demanded as she ran forward and grabbed hold of the policeman’s uniformed arm.
    ‘You can’t do this,’ Sofia was protesting angrily as she came out of the house. ‘You have no right to come into our house, saying that you’re looking for Fascist papers and taking away good innocent men.’
    ‘I’m sorry, Sofia,’ Constable Black apologised gruffly, ‘but orders is orders and we’ve bin given ours. There’s no need for you to go carryin’ on like this. Like as not your dad and the others will be sent home in the morning, once everything’s bin sorted out.’
    Christine was now deep in conversation with Aldo. La Nonna was standing just inside the open door, still dressed in her nightgown, her long white hair in a plait. Bella was at her grandmother’s side, her own thick black hair curling softly onto her shoulders. Where Rosie was fine-boned and slender, with delicate features, Bella was slightly plump, with warm olive skin and large dark brown eyes, that could flash with temper or dance with laughter, depending on her mood. Immediately Rosie rushed over to her friend.
    ‘La Nonna cannot understand what is happening,’ Bella whispered tearfully to Rosie, as Rosie reached for la Nonna’s thin veined hand to give it a comforting squeeze. It felt so cold, trembling in the comforting grasp of her own.
    ‘They are taking my Giovanni away, Rosie,’ she wept, ‘but he has done nothing wrong.’
    ‘Hush now, Mamma. It will be all right. You will see.’
    Rosie turned with relief to see Maria, neatly dressed as always in her plain black clothes, her hair, like her mother’s, confined in a neat long plait, and looking as calm as though it was nothing unusual to be woken in the night and forced to watch the family’s menfolk being marched away by the police.
    ‘You’re a fool if you think that, Maria,’ Sofia cried out bitterly. ‘Mamma and Papà should have left this country and gone home to Italia wherewe would all have been safe. I have told them that so many times.’
    ‘England is our home now, Sofia,’ Maria reproved her sister gently, whilst Rosie and Bella stood protectively either side of la Nonna, trying their best to comfort her.
    ‘How can you say that? Look at the way we are treated! See the way our men are dragged from their beds, and our homes are invaded. Is that the way to treat people?’
    ‘Constable Black has explained to us that he is simply carrying out his orders. It is for Papà and the other men’s safety that they are being taken to the police station. Especially whilst there is so much rioting going on in the city…’
    ‘That’s nonsense,’ Sofia stopped Maria scornfully. ‘Look at Mamma…see how distressed she is. This will be the death of her, you do know that, don’t you?’ Sofia turned to challenge the policeman bitterly. ‘Is that what you want? To have the blood of an innocent Italian grandmother on your hands?’
    ‘Sofia, please, you are upsetting Mamma and Papà,’ Maria reproved her sister quietly.
    ‘Oh, Maria, why are you such a saint that you cannot see what is beneath your own nose?’ Sofia rounded on her angrily.
    ‘What’s happening, Constable Black?’ Rosie questioned the policeman shakily, as Maria struggled to calm her volatile