Some Sunny Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

there was a manlying in the gutter who the mob had left for dead. Police were waiting on an ambulance to tek him to the hospital.’
    ‘And with you, of course, your own safety always comes before that of anyone else, especially poor Maria,’ Sofia snapped.
    ‘Sofia, please,’ Maria protested. ‘It is not fair to blame Aldo. He is not responsible for those who are rioting.’
    ‘Isn’t it time you went home, Christine?’ Sofia said to Rosie’s mother sharply. ‘You aren’t Italian, after all,’ she repeated, ‘and you’ll be safer behind your own front door.’
    Again a charged look passed between her mother and Sofia, which Rosie couldn’t interpret.
    Christine gave a small shrug. ‘Walk us ’ome, will you, Aldo?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t fancy walking back on me own, not with all them fellas running riot.’
    A strange, almost prickly silence filled the small room, broken only when Maria bowed her head and said softly, ‘Yes, Aldo, you must go with Christine and Rosie, and make sure they get home safely. May the Blessed Virgin keep you safe, Rosie,’ she added, her words muffled against Rosie’s hair as she hugged her tightly and kissed her.
    Tears burned the backs of Rosie’s eyes as she returned the hug and then followed her mother and Aldo, who was already opening the back door.
    The street was now quiet, its silence making the devastation that lay before them all the moreshocking. The road was scattered with broken glass and doors that had been ripped off their hinges. Rosie’s stomach lurched when she saw the bright red streaks of blood on the glass. She hoped fiercely they belonged to the men who had done the attacking and not to those who had been attacked.
    ‘Jesus, it looks as though bloody Hitler’s bin bombing the place,’ Rosie heard her mother whisper to Aldo, as she clung tightly to his arm. Rosie, though, hung back, reluctant to take hold of his other arm. For some reason she was unable to understand, Rosie had never felt entirely comfortable in Aldo’s company. In fact, when she witnessed the way he treated poor Maria, she couldn’t understand how her mother could make such a fuss of him and, even worse, openly flirt with him in front of Maria herself. But she knew better than to take her mother to task for her behaviour. Christine made her own rules and didn’t take kindly to being criticised, plus she had a keen temper on her when she was angered. Rosie had heard the arguments between her parents when her father had attempted to reason with her. On more than one occasion Rosie had witnessed Christine throwing whatever came to hand at her husband, including the crockery, before storming out, slamming the back door behind her and leaving Rosie and her father to pick up the broken shards.
        
    They had almost reached their own front door, which was several doors down from the Grenellis’. Theirhouse, unlike those of the street’s Italian families, looked uncared for, the step dusty and undonkey-stoned, and the paintwork dull instead of the bright blues, reds and yellows favoured by the Italians, which, like the window boxes of summer bedding plants in their equally rich colours they loved so much, were reminders of the warm, vibrant Mediterranean they had left behind. Stepping into the streets of Little Italy was like turning a corner into a brilliantly vivid special place where all the colours seemed brighter, the song birds sang more sweetly, the laughter echoed more happily, and even the air itself, scented with the rich smells of Italy, seemed warmer. But, best of all, the whole area, or so it seemed to Rosie, was imbued with a special atmosphere of love.
    Set against this backdrop, her own home seemed unwelcomingly drab. No carefully tended window boxes of flowers adorned her mother’s windowsills, the sound of singing and laughter never wafted out onto the air from open windows, no appetising smells of delicious pasta and soups wafted from her mother’s kitchen,