The Italian Matchmaker by Santa Montefiore Page B

reiterated. The children nodded, then skipped off outside.
    ‘You’re going to have to decide between me and Cosima,’ Rosa said gravely.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I can’t continue to live in the same house as her. She’s like a living ghost. It’s depressing watching her wander about half dead.’
    ‘Don’t say such things!’
    ‘Come on, Mamma ! Do you want your grandchildren growing up in this soup of misery?’
    Alba walked over to the window and gazed out on to the garden. The scent of eucalyptus and jasmine wafted in on the breeze as the sun sank into the sea. ‘When I first arrived here I was only a little older than you,’ she said wistfully. ‘Your great-grandmother, Immacolata, was like Cosima, dressed in black like a little squat crow, her face pinched with grief. She had lost her daughter, my mother, and one of her sons in the war. She dwelt in a limbo between life and death, just like your cousin. She had two shrines, illuminated by candles, and she prayed there every day. The house felt heavy and unhappy. But she wasn’t alone. She had her son Falco, Beata his wife and their son Toto, and her great-grandchild, Cosima.’ She turned to her daughter and took her hands. ‘The point is, darling, Cosima needs us. We’re her family. We are the strength she lacks. If every day is a struggle, we must make that struggle easier to bear. One day she will move on. She might even fall in love again. She’s not too old to bear more children. Things won’t be like this for ever. But you have to be patient. Imagine if you were in her shoes.’ Rosa lowered her eyes. ‘Imagine if you had suffered the same loss.’
    ‘It’s too terrible to imagine.’

7
     
    In the farmhouse on the hill that had belonged to her great-grandmother, Cosima painstakingly replaced every one of Francesco’s knick-knacks. She brought each object to her nose and sniffed it like a pining dog. Sometimes she felt that she’d find him asleep in her bed as if the last three years hadn’t happened. She could almost hear his breathing and feel his presence in the room. But she’d turn to look and he wouldn’t be there, just the memories that lingered like ghosts. She felt so alone. So abandoned. Closing her eyes, she willed herself to die.
    Alba sat on the terrace with her aunt Beata and watched the sun set slowly into the sea. The place hadn’t changed much since Immacolata’s day. Back then there hadn’t been a road to the house: they had had to park beneath the eucalyptus tree on the hill above and walk down a narrow path. Alba and her husband, Panfilo, had built a proper drive and added to the house to accommodate their growing family. Toto, Cosima’s father, had married again and taken his wife to live with his parents, a few hundred yards through the olive grove in the house where he had grown up, leaving Cosima with Alba, where she felt most at home. Cosima’s half brother and sisters had married and had children, buying houses nearby so the once quiet hillside rang with the happy laughter of young people. The place still smelt the same, of jasmine and viburnum, eucalyptus and gardenia. The wind swept in off the sea, bringing with it the scent of pine and wild thyme, and, in the evenings as the air grew cooler and the light more forgiving, crickets rang out with the flirtatious twittering of roosting birds. ‘I worry about Cosima,’ Alba said, watching the children rag about on the grass. ‘She’s thirty-seven. She should be enjoying marriage and motherhood. She should focus her thoughts on those who are living and who love her.’
    ‘I know,’ Beata agreed. ‘The children play around her and she barely notices them. Little Alessandro follows her like a lost dog, as if he senses the reason for her unhappiness and is trying to compensate, but she ignores him. It’s the guilt, you see. She blames herself for Francesco’s death.’
    ‘They say those who drown don’t suffer.’
    ‘How can they know?’
    ‘I hope