Some Sunny Day Read Online Free PDF

unless Rosie herself was making them, which wasn’t very often because her father didn’t like ‘all that foreign muck’, so when she cooked for him Rosie stuck to the traditional English dishes.
    Christine modelled herself on her favourite screen actresses, like Rita Hayworth, who were known for their glamour rather than their domestic virtues, rather than on a respected Italian mamma like la Nonna.
    ‘Rosie, run over to Currie Street and fetch us a fish supper from Pod’s, will yer?’ Rosie heard her mother demanding. She was still leaning on Aldo’s arm and had handed him her door key, intimating that she felt too weak to unlock the door herself. But not so weak that she didn’t want her supper, Rosie reflected wryly as she hurried off towards Podestra’s, hoping that the chip shop had escaped the vengeance of the rioters.
    Podestra’s fish-and-chip shop was normally only a few minutes’ walk away, but tonight, with the glass and other debris littering the streets, it took Rosie over twice as long as usual to pick her way through it in the ominous silence that hung as heavily on the air as the dust from the destruction.
    Sickeningly, through one of the windows that had been broken in she could see where furniture had been smashed to pieces, the horsehair spilling out of a sofa through the deep knife cuts slashed into it, whilst a child’s hobbyhorse lay broken on the floor beside it. Despite the warmth of the evening, Rosie shivered, wondering what had happened to the family whose home it was, and praying that they were unhurt.
    Although Rosie’s mother was a Catholic, her father was staunchly Church of England, which was yet another bone of contention between her parents. Rosie had been christened as a Catholic at her mother’s insistence, but Christine was not a devout churchgoer, and sometimes Rosie suspected that her mother had only insisted on Rosie becoming Catholicto annoy Rosie’s father. It had been pious Maria who had encouraged Rosie to go to church with Bella, and who had provided the necessary white dress for Rosie’s confirmation. Rosie was obedient to the dictates of her religion and attended church every week, as well as making her confession. Her faith was a simple but strong belief in God, although war and the horrible things it was bringing sometimes tested that faith. However, because her father was of a different religion, Rosie stood slightly outside the traditional observances in the Italian community, where many of the older women went to church every day – sometimes more than once. Rosie did say her prayers every night, though, always asking God to protect those who were in peril, especially her father.
    She had almost reached the chippie when three young Italians, still just boys, walked past her going in the opposite direction. Two of them were supporting the third between them, as he struggled to walk. One of the two had obviously received a head wound, and dried blood was visible on the bandage tied around it.
    Rosie shivered. What was happening to people? To the city she loved? Those boys had grown up here in Liverpool. Suddenly she longed desperately for her father, with his slow reasoned way of speaking and his gentle strength. He might not be a handsome man like Aldo, nor possess the musical talent and hospitable warmth of Carlo, who drew others towards him so easily, but her father hadhis own special strength and Rosie loved him with a fiercely protective intensity. She hated it when her mother snapped at him and taunted him because of the limp he had developed as a young boy, when he had fallen downstairs and broken his leg so badly that he was left with it slightly shorter than its fellow, and which made it uncomfortable for him to take her dancing.
    ‘If you’re mekin’ for Pod’s I shouldn’t bother, it’s closed,’ a woman called out to Rosie from the other side of the street, showing her the empty bowl she had obviously intended to have filled with pease