Have you any hobbies?

“I’ll pay you, twenty thousand Lira per trip plus all your expenses. Five days out” She sounded desperate.

I considered the proposal for a microsecond. Christmas was coming and I was broke.

“Yes, OK” I shrugged. I’d been taking friends of friends of the family into Rome for a day tours for years. I’d never been offered such a big sum before.

“Can you start tomorrow morning?” Helena was persistent. “He’s bored just hanging around Frascati with me and the kids”

We made a plan for the morning. She would drop her house guest at the train station, where we would meet, and he would give me an envelope of money for the day. Helena cut me off when I started to propose an itinerary. I was to take him where I fancied in Rome, feed him what he wanted and have us back on the 4pm train out of Roma Termini.

The last Wednesday before Christmas, in a very slight drizzle and two days since I’d got back to Italy, I found myself standing outside Frascati station waiting for Helena’s guest. A stepson of a good friend, about my age, goes to university too. Vague enough CV for a day out with a stranger but I had taken many strangers about for the day in Rome. My head hurt ever so slightly as Dad and I had got stuck into some bottling the night before. Back in the 1980’s this involved boiling corks, funneling wine into bottles and sipping the top if the levels were slightly too high for the corks. We only had one corking machine, so fifty litres of the local Marino white took a while and by the end the wine store floor was awash with small, but cumulative spillages. I was thrilled he’d waited for me to get home before bottling.

Helena barely stopped her black Mercedes outside the station, and I watched as Justin clambered out dressed for midwinter on the Yorkshire Dales with a small hiking backpack. Nice enough looking bloke, sandy hair, not too tall, blue eyes but what was he wearing and carrying? I’m my defense, I was 21, mid-way through uni and dressed elegantly for Rome on a winters morning. First impressions mattered to me then. I was sheepishly handed a sealed envelope with my name scrawled on it, which I immediately ripped open and bought return tickets for the train pulling out of the station.

On the train, I engaged a recalcitrant Justin in a stilted conversation about his course. For the life of me I cannot remember what he did or where he went, somewhere in England, and he was doing a Masters, which elevated him above my 2 years down. I sensed he was bored by me.

We got to Roma Termini and I broke my own rule about not buying coffee and croissants at the exorbitant prices at the small café bars surrounding the station. I inhaled my espresso as Justin sipped his lukewarm Lipton tea. His little finger stuck out pretentiously to the amusement of the café staff. I suggested where we would start: a metro to the Colosseum, walk down past the Forum and end up at the Trevi Fountain for lunch at some of the cracking little pizzerias. He had no sightseeing preferences and reminded me Helena had me booked for five days, so there were plenty opportunities. I broke into tour guide mode and started pointing out architectural nuances and telling anecdotal stories about popes, artists and ancient Rome. The morning went well. Rome was crispy and smelt of roasted chestnuts. I took photographs of him with his camera, posing next to various statues and made small talk in between the tourist sites. We spent a while at the Pantheon and Piazza Navona before catching the bus back to Termini and the Frascati train. Helena was waiting impatiently at the station and was drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. I waved as they drove off, both of them ignored me. I got the connecting bus home - job done. I felt a bit deflated, but had earned some money.

I was surprised that night when Mum got a call from Helena asking for me to accompany Justin again in the following afternoon for tour of Ostia Antica and then a spot of Christmas shopping. This time I was to be loaned a car to drive him around.

Ostia Antica never fails to disappoint. I had always loved the rambling ruins and grooves in the basalt streets, just wide enough for ten soldiers to march side by side. Justin wandered about in his hiking clothes, slightly indifferently considering the amazing archaeology he was surrounded by. After trailing him around the ruins, I got him an Orangina to drink while I drank two espressi very quickly, and drove to the shopping mall at Acilia. At his request we went to a chain department store and I followed about as he looked at men’s clothes, then jewelry and the toys. Eventually he bought a thin blue enamel bangle for his step mother. One purchase in almost two hours was not good progress. I drove him home erratically and made a very valid excuse we could not go out a third day running as the olives needed picking and Dad wanted to have them pressed before Christmas. Time was counting down. But I agreed we would spend the Saturday evening out in Rome, so he could see Rome by night and have dinner out.

I could not quite believe the transformation in Justin. He was dressed well. The sturdy boots were replaced by elegant shoes and he wore a jacket and tie. His trousers were unmistakably Italian in cut and, I have to admit he looked very good, handsome almost. Apart from the rucksack. I guessed Helena had taken him in hand while I was climbing trees and knocking the ripe olives onto the orange nets.

The new Justin was more animated, and I thought that his new clothes had given him more confidence. After looking at the illuminated fountains and wandering through the small boutiques around the Via Corso I took him by bus to a favorite tiny trattoria in Trastevere for dinner. Conversation was easy and I began to see Justin in a new light. Perhaps I’d been to critical earlier. You must remember I was full of the shallowness of my age. Justin was attentive, filling my glass with a Bollini merlot as soon as it was slightly empty and for the first time since I’d been his guide/shopper he appeared to like me. I felt very happy and attracted to him. At the end of dinner, he passed me a small brightly wrapped gift.

“I want to give you a Christmas present early” He said smiling at me. “Go on open it”

I was a bit embarrassed; I didn’t think we’d be exchanging gifts. I carefully opened the wrapping. Inside was a pair of gold earrings. They were beautiful and I immediately put them on thanking him profusely and putting my tiny ones in my bag. On the train home Justin sat beside me rather than opposite and I was flattered – perhaps a little tipsy.

“Have you any hobbies?” He asked looking at me closely, intently.

I enthused about the sub aqua club and what I’d seen underwater and how I’d saved up for my wet suit and next term I’d buy myself my very own compass.

“And you? Have you any hobbies?”

Before he answered Justin took my hand and turned it over in his fingers. I felt a thrill of anticipation.

“I shoplift” he said smiling.

“Um….what?” I stammered. Suddenly the effects of the merlot vanished, and I was staring in shock at this stranger who was holding my hand on a dimly-lit train rattling through the night.

“Shoplift” said Justin calmly and kissed the back of my hand, letting his lips linger over my rings.

“Have you been shoplifting while you’ve been with me?” I asked, hoping for a negative answer.

“Yes”, he swept his free hand over his clothing, smiling with pride. Then to my horror he tapped one of my earrings, before kissing my cheek.

To my relief the guard came to check the tickets and gave me the opportunity to remove my hand from Justin’s. I did not let him have it back.

“What if you had been caught?” I was curious now. Sub aqua in the icy Scottish lochs looked benign.

“Well, did you see me?” Justin was enjoying this way too much.

I changed the subject and tried to focus his conversation away from the times he almost got caught to talking about Christmas and who was coming to Helena’s Christmas Eve party. I failed completely and was relieved when we arrived at the station and I could get away from his closeness and boasting. I got an inkling now what the rucksack had been for. There were no more busses, so Helena drove me home and I shrank in the back of the Mercedes listening to Justin and her enthuse about Rome by night. Helena complemented me on dressing Justin and the quality of his new clothing. I felt sick.

The olives gave me the perfect excuse for not taking Justin out for a few days. Dad went on a crusade to finish the twenty six trees by Sunday afternoon and a trip to the local press by Sunday evening. There he said, we can drink some wine and eat bruschetta while the olives are squeezed. It is exactly what we did and as I looked out at the Alban hills, the valleys full of woodsmoke and winter, I reflected on the weirdness of Justin and how one minute I had wanted to kiss him and the next I was repulsed.

Helena called first thing on Monday and had a long hushed talk with Mum. When she got off the phone I was called. What had I done to Justin? He had left suddenly saying he was going to see some friends in Milan and would not be back. Helena was worried I might have been part of the abrupt change and had I led him on and rejected him? She had paid me good money to take a naïve young man around, and I was blamed squarely for his abrupt leaving. Confused and insulted I withdrew and spent the rest of the days before the party cycling and seeing friends. In truth I liked the earrings and wanted to wear them, but also felt I could not admit to either Mum or Helena I’d been party to their theft.

I dreaded the Christmas Eve party. The drinks bit before dinner was bearable. Friends of my parents asking about uni and telling me about dives they had done around the world. I was asked to help in the kitchen. Parrying questions about Justin, I moved food to the buffet table and stirred pots. Everyone was called into dinner and the younger children given plates and helped to fill them before they sat down at the low children’s table. Called back into the kitchen I could hear the the parents filled their glasses and plates and took their places on the beautifully decorated long table. Somehow, I was last to fill my plate. I walked up one side of the long table searching for a place to sit. Helena’s voice cut across the conversations clearly.

“Sophie, darling, you are to sit with the children”

Embarrassed, I took the corner of the table and three five-year old’s shuffled up making room for me. The tiny chair was much too low, and my knees prevented me from getting close to the table. I was mortified. A neat and very public put down. I let my fingers play on my earrings. I’d earned them now.

After Christmas had come and gone, Mum told me that Helena had absolutely loved her gifts from Justin, they were very thoughtful and expensive. The children too were very happy with their toys and my shopping trip must have been very busy. It turned out Justin was going to see his girlfriend in Milan. She was so pleased she was going to give me a couple of bottles of merlot from her families vineyard to take back to the UK at the end of the holidays.