Free What Love Is by D C Grant Page B

able to tell us what the deal is. It looks too complicated for me, and for Mum too.
    Bevan really hated it when I left again; he said that one night together was not enough. I thought after being apart for so long might have changed his mind about having sex, but no, he’s sticking to his guns, or maybe I should say his gun is sticking in his pants! Mind you it was nice to cuddle up to him again and feel his arms around me. He said I had gotten bigger, not me, really, but the baby in my tummy. I guess for me the growth happens a little bit each day, whereas he hadn’t seen me for two weeks, so in his eyes I must have grown a lot in that time. He keeps putting his hand on my tummy and feeling the baby, trying to guess what all the knobbly bits are, but I’m so used to it now that it’s not new to me.
    When it came time to leave, he held me tight – well, as tight as he could with a bump in the way – and whispered in my ear about how much he missed me and how he wished he could come down to help me, but he has to stay at home.
    I promised him I’d have everything sorted by Christmas and then we can spend the holiday together, alone in his house because his family is going away but he can’t. Maybe then I can lure him to bed, prove to him that I am still attractive even though I’m fat.

The Only Real Home
    21 October
    It is raining and so windy that the wind gusts reach the back of the cave. I shiver as I lie on my bed of straw, and Aroldo tries to keep me warm. In spite of the rain and the swollen rivers, the Eighth Army has crossed the Rubicon and taken Cesena. Yet Patricio says that many of the Anglo-American divisions have been taken from Italy to fight the war in France and it is up to us now to hold the Germans at bay and make them run back to their homeland. But the Germans have built fortifications in the mountains which we cannot attack on our own. Patricio also says he is low on ammunition, and men – many have slunk back to their homes because of this cold weather and the lack of food. So now Patricio sits at the entrance to the cave and smokes and broods and counts ammunition. I think I will soon be doing another errand to fetch more rounds from wherever they can be found.
    I look around this cave, our brutal home, and notice that we are half the number we used to be. All that is left are those who, like me, have no home to go to, whose families have been murdered or transported to Germany. Or like Aroldo, a stranger in our land so far away from his own and now with an Italian wife that he doesn’t really want.
    Meanwhile planes fly overhead and we hear the distant sounds of mortars and bombs and wonder who is being killed today. We have suffered so much already, and there seems to be no end in sight. For the first time I worry about what will become of me when this child is born. This is no place to give birth, this rough cave in which we shelter, but it is too dangerous to go anywhere else. Besides, Patricio won’t let me go – he says I know too much.
    30 October
    The Germans are everywhere, murdering our people and leaving them lying in the mud. They even murder them in churches and in cemeteries, places of God, it is not right. The rain comes down every day, and there is no escape from the cold wind. I cannot believe that the weather is like this, the autumn is usually such a calm, dry time when we gather in the harvest and put the food away for the winter. This year I think God has forsaken us, left us alone with the German devils and spawned a devil in me.
    10 November
    I have a little bump – there can be no doubt now that I am pregnant, but my clothes still fit because I am so thin. We are starving here, and sometimes it is too dangerous to down to the villages for food. Indeed there is little food to be had anywhere at all, and it doesn’t seem fair to take it from the people in the village, though they give it up willingly enough. I go down often, my dress pulled tight so that the