More about Rita:

I'm not sure but I think Rita was from Cormayeur in Valle D'Aosta one of Italy's quirkier regions (not like it doesn't have loads), though she herself was Jewish. Her father was head-chef at the Savoy at London, but he left her back in the valley when he was working there. When war broke out, she was still there and her parents were in London, or so I'm told. With no supervision, she turned into something of a wild child, and by the time the Germans had arrived, she was a bit nutty.

Anyway, for her safety the partisans took her up into the mountains. They sat her beneath a tree and said "don't move" and went off to blow up the cable car. Well, she heard the explosion and she crouched down really small, and then she heard a wailing, whipping noise and looked up to see that the cable had snapped like an elastic band, hurtled through the air and wrapped itself around the tree above her head, burying itself deep in the trunk. Apparently, it's still there, or so she told me. Then she went back to being a wild child for the rest of the war.