151. A sense of belonging

Roman could hear the blood swooshing through his veins. He most certainly knew he was alive. He could feel a quiver through his leg muscles. He pushed the underneath of his shoes firmly into the dockside to stop the quivering, which was disconcerting, to say the least. Up until now, he had thought himself to be excited; excited for the first time since he had waved farewell to his mother on the hillside outside of Assisi.

Through the stale cigarette smoke and the body odour, which even the most spiced of aftershaves could not smother, Roman had smelt the anxiety on his father as he scurried away over the coils of rope, toward the red phone booth. Uncle Giuseppe was nowhere on the dock, all that Guido had was a series of numbers on a scrap of paper from an exercise book. He left Roman alone on the foreign dock.