The Secret Messenger. Mandy Robotham

the Veneto’s partisan groups – it seems there can be pockets of quiet, even in a war. Luckily, Tommaso is on hand with his pen – sharp in more ways than one – to whip up an apt cartoon. I hear both him and Arlo giggling behind me at Tommaso’s latest caricature of ‘Il Duce’, painting him as the clown that my own Popsa predicted he would be.

      ‘You should make him even fatter than that!’ Arlo teases.

      ‘He’s already busting out of his uniform,’ Tommaso argues. ‘Besides, there’s not enough space to fit in all of his girth!’ The two pitch back and forth, a background noise that makes me smile, and I half wish it was Vito sharing the work with Arlo and Tommaso, instead of being out there risking himself.

      The other pages of the paper we fill with news of the war in Europe, gleaned from Radio Londra. Once again, I’m grateful to the army of grandmothers listening slavishly to the broadcasts next to their stoves, scratching their reports in the dim kitchen light.

      I leave the team about to print, as I change roles once again and head to the vast, empty space of Santa Eufemia. I duck behind the altar and catch myself pulling at several stray strands of hair and tucking them away.

      ‘Silly woman,’ I mutter to myself.

      Jack is at his desk, peering into the spotlight and fiddling with a screwdriver.

      ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘I was just about to put on some water for tea. I’m assuming you’ve come early for the best seat at Café Giovanni?’

      ‘Nothing less than your best table, Signor,’ I say, sitting on the wooden box.

      He’s still packaging the latest parcel, but I’m not late. I’ll easily make the curfew, I tell myself. I’m happy to stay. Eager even.

      We talk about our different lives again – him quizzing me about growing up on the fantasy island of Venice, hopping on a boat to go anywhere, the isolation of living out on a limb in the lagoon.

      ‘I’m sure Venetians never think of it as isolation,’ I say. ‘It’s more like our cocoon of water makes us special. That it’s the rest of the world which has it wrong, in living on swathes of solid land.’

      ‘Some people might call that elitist – grandiose,’ Jack says, offering me a cup of his special brew.

      ‘They might,’ I concede. ‘But you know, we’ve been taken over – borne plagues and invasions – that many times, I don’t think we care any more. We only worry about the survival of Venice.’

      ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he agrees, his expression becoming pensive. ‘When I see the holes made by Hitler’s bombs in London, I fear for its future. But then I remember she’s a great old dame and she’ll survive, even if it means losing a bit of her sheen. The heart will keep beating.’

      In the candlelight, I can see his eyes glaze over with memories – of his family and the street where he lives – and I love the fact that he loves his hometown. Even if it’s not in Italy.

      The parcel tucked deep in my handbag, I catch the last vaporetto over to the main island. It’s full, passengers grumbling that the previous one has been cancelled.

      ‘You’re lucky this one’s running,’ the boatman says to the muttering crowd. ‘We’ve nearly run out of coal.’

      I make a mental note to talk to Sergio’s deputy in my battalion – if the vaporettos stop travelling to Giudecca, we’ll have to arrange an alternative boatman to reach the newspaper office in the evenings. Even so, I don’t relish the journey in a rowing vessel across the sometimes-choppy expanse, caught in the rough wash of German patrol boats.

      Venice is quiet and eerie in its blue sulphur light as I walk quickly home, wishing my shoes didn’t clop and echo on the pebble walkways. I’m cutting it fine on the curfew and quicken my pace, hoping it doesn’t sound like I’m walking too fast for some sinister purpose. Which, of course, I am. After the first transport of radio parts I feel confident of being able to smile my way through any checkpoints.

      I realise too late that complacency is a dangerous thing – I emerge from a walkway just two streets away from home and run straight into a German patrol. I feel my face constrict, but pull on my muscles to produce the right smile. Hoping my eyes don’t betray me.

      ‘Good evening,’ I say in German. There are just two of them but, as we are well aware in the Resistance, it takes only one weapon to make a fatal difference. They each have a small machine gun hanging casually across one shoulder, plus a holstered handgun.

      Fortunately, one returns the smile at my decent German. ‘Evening Fräulein,’ the taller one says. ‘You’re out late.’