Larenzo's Christmas Baby

In the handful of times he’d been at the villa, Larenzo had never asked her to eat with him. The two of them alone on the terrace would have been awkward, intimate, and Emma happily ate leftovers in the kitchen, one of her photography books propped against the salt and pepper shakers.

‘Um...I’ve already eaten,’ she said after a second’s pause. It had to be past ten o’clock at night.

‘Come have a glass of wine. I don’t feel like being alone.’

Was that a command? Emma shrugged her assent; she wouldn’t mind a glass of wine, and perhaps Larenzo would tell her what was going on.

‘Okay,’ she said, and she fetched two glasses while Larenzo selected a bottle of red wine from the rack above the sink.

While Larenzo took his plate of eggs out to the terrace, Emma retrieved her sweater from the sitting room, slipping her arms through the sleeves as she stepped outside. The moon was high and full above the pine-blanketed hills, the Nebrodi range’s highest peak, Mount Soro, piercing the night sky. Larenzo was already seated at a table overlooking the pool, the water glimmering in the moonlight, but he rose as Emma came forward with the two glasses and proffered the bottle of wine. She nodded her assent and sat down while he poured.

‘This is very civilised,’ she said as she accepted the glass.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ Larenzo answered. ‘Well, let’s enjoy it while we can.’ He raised his glass in a toast and Emma lifted hers as well before taking a sip. The wine was rich and velvety-smooth, clearly expensive, but she put her glass down after one sip and gave her boss as direct a look as she could.

‘You’re sure everything is all right?’

‘As right as it can be,’ Larenzo answered, taking a sip of wine.

‘What does that mean?’

He set his glass down and stretched his legs out in front of him. ‘Exactly that. But I don’t want to talk about myself, not tonight. For a few hours I’d just like to forget.’

Forget what? Emma wondered, but clearly Larenzo didn’t want her to ask.

‘You’ve been my housekeeper for nearly a year and I don’t really know the first thing about you,’ he continued, and Emma stared at him in surprise.

‘You want to talk about me?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because...well, because you’ve never expressed an interest in knowing anything about me before. And actually, I’m quite a boring person.’

He smiled, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

Emma shook her head slowly. This evening was becoming almost surreal. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Where did you grow up?’

An innocuous enough question, she supposed. ‘Everywhere, really. I was a diplomat’s kid.’

‘I think I remember you mentioning that in your interview.’ He’d interviewed her in Rome, where she’d been working as a chambermaid in a hotel, just one in a string of jobs she’d had as she moved from city to city, exploring the world and taking photographs.

‘And you haven’t minded being stuck up here in the hills of Sicily?’ he asked, his wine glass raised to his lips. ‘All by yourself?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m used to being on my own.’ And she preferred it that way. No ties, no obligations, no disappointments. The occasional bout of loneliness was not too high a price to pay for that kind of freedom.

‘Even so.’

‘You obviously like it,’ she pointed out. ‘Since you own this place.’

‘Yes, but I travel and spend time in cities. I’m not up here all the time.’

‘Well, as I said, I like it.’ For now, anyway. She never remained anywhere for too long, always preferring to move on, to find new experiences, and from the sceptical look on Larenzo’s face he seemed to guess a bit of her natural wanderlust.

‘Have you met anyone up here?’ he asked. ‘Made friends?’

‘A few people down in Troina.’

‘That’s something, I suppose. What do you do for fun up here?’

Emma shrugged. ‘Walk. Swim. Read. I’m easily entertained, fortunately.’

‘Yes.’ He gazed out at the mountains and Emma had the sense he was thinking about something else, something painful.

‘But it’s not the kind of job you’d stay in for ever,’ he said at last.

‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’ she asked lightly. She’d meant it as a joke but Larenzo took the question seriously.