There is a blanket on an old wooden pallet laid out in one corner, alongside an unlit candle. Below the single gap in the cave roof, a spill of daylight shows the burned-out ashes of our fire from last week.
We are both breathing hard as he kisses me. We fumble with each other’s buttons, our skin pimpling in the chilly air of the cave.
‘You are cold.’ He rubs my arms.
‘I don’t care.’
The heat of him, the weight of him. The closeness of him as we kiss again and again. His back is hard and smooth. His eyes on mine are wide, serious.
‘Ti amo,’ he says.
I kiss him again.
And everything in me rises to meet him. His mouth on my mouth. His breath in my lungs. For a stretch of time, nothing else exists.
As the sweat cools on our skin, he lights the fire, then lies back on the blanket, his arm across me. He runs his fingers over my neck, my breasts, my ribcage, down to my belly and back up, watching the pattern of goosebumps, then pressing his lips to smooth my skin again.
Then he lays his head on my chest.
‘I mean this, about the mountains in Moena,’ he says, and I know then that he heard the hesitation and disbelief in my voice earlier. ‘I will show these to you. After the war, I will take you home.’
‘After the war?’ I say. ‘But the barriers are nearly finished. And who knows where you will go afterwards, what will happen?’ And it won’t be my home.
I close my eyes and breathe in slowly to quell the panic I feel at a world without Cesare. It’s a foolish idea that I can’t survive without him, that when he goes, my world will be a washed-out grey. Before I met him, I didn’t know that I was missing anything at all. I could have lived very happily without him. But now . . .
‘Major Bates has said that you will be sent somewhere else, in England or Wales.’ It is painful. A physical ache in my chest.
‘I will come back for you.’ He kisses my neck, my jaw, my mouth.
‘How do we know when the war will end? It could be months or years.’ I stare at him, trying to hide my fear. But in his eyes, I see the same terror, the same longing.
‘Then I will wait for you,’ he says. And he kisses me.
We cannot stay long in the cave: people will talk and Con will worry. There is a track, to the east of the cliffs, which leads down to the sea, where we rinse our bodies in the cold water, gasping, and where Cesare tries to swim.
I’ve shown him every time we’ve been to the caves, and although he can’t stay afloat for more than a few strokes, he’s able to turn onto his back now.
‘Relax,’ I say, my body floating underneath his. ‘As if you’re lying down.’
‘I don’t lie down in water,’ he says irritably.
At first he panics and tries to stand up, but eventually he lets his weight rest on me, and then, as I swim out from under him, he stays floating, looking up at the sky, smiling.
Afterwards, we let the heat of the sun pull the water from our skin and then we tug on our clothes and start to walk up the path and back towards the camp, the bothy, the chapel.
Cesare presses something cold into my hand.
‘What is that?’ I open my palm and, in it, I see a jagged piece of metal, which must have come from somewhere on the ship. It looks like a miniature gabled roof, or the arch of a small bird’s folded wing.
‘What is it?’ I ask again.
His eyes are warm. ‘Cuore,’ he says. ‘This is a heart.’
‘Oh!’ I turn it over, not knowing what to say. ‘It’s . . . sharp.’
He laughs. ‘I pick it up on the beach before. It is part of a ship, perhaps. Or a bomb. I will melt it and make it a better shape in the forge, if you like?’
‘Thank you.’
He takes it back from me and tucks it into his pocket.
The hour is late, the air cold and I worry about Con, so Cesare and I hurry the remaining distance back to the camp. The sun sits low on the horizon – in midsummer there is no such thing as true darkness – but the strange light makes weird shadows and we stumble more than once. There are no jokes this time.
There is a faint glow from the chapel, but inside it is silent and still, as if the building itself is praying. I never grow tired of the feeling of worship in this place. It is partly the closeness of the wind and the sea and partly the way that every painted brushstroke and every curve of metal seems made from hope.
Cesare and I are both panting and I have gorse scratches on my legs.
‘I must go back to the camp,’ Cesare says, kissing me quickly.
I watch him walk down the hill, until I can no longer see his shadowy shape moving through the gathering darkness.
Then there is a hand on my shoulder. My blood jolts and I whirl around, hands raised, ready to claw at whichever guard –
It is Con. Her face tear-streaked and pale.
‘Heavens, Con! What’s wrong? You scared the life out of me.’
‘Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just – I think I saw him. I think he’s out there, somewhere, waiting for me.’
She doesn’t have to tell me who he is.
My throat is dry and I pull her close. Her body feels thin and frail, smaller than mine, somehow, more fragile, even though we are exactly the same height. I can feel her fear, can feel her panicked heart. I wish she would talk to me about it, but every time I try to ask her to tell me exactly what happened, her face closes. I
