It all made sense now. Lunch was easy enough to find, but it all depended on what view you wanted. Seated outside the Hostaria Pantheon with its white-and-red checked tablecloths, freshly poured white wine with a front-row seat to the Pantheon, my guide had chosen well. Marcello raised his glass to me.

‘Salute.’

I brought mine up to clink against his and we drank in unison. I placed my glass back on the table, melting back into my chair and taking it all in. While there was always a consistent hum around us, a new silence fell between us, and then it occurred to me how strange this all was. I had jokingly alluded to a hot date in front of the others, and now this felt strangely like one.

I shook the thought from my mind.

Don’t be ridiculous, Sammi, let’s just refuel the tank and …

‘Oh, wow.’

Marcello topped my glass, his brows raised in question.

‘Spaghetti alle vongole veraci, the risotto alla crema di scampi, the fettuccine mari e monti,’ I read aloud in what was no doubt the worst Italian accent ever, but the choices were just too much. I had died and gone to food heaven.

Marcello read his own selection of the menu.

‘Rigatoni alla carbonara, abbacchio alla scottadito, coratella con ai carciofi.’

I had absolutely no idea what any of it meant, but I really wanted him to say it again; the way he rolled his tongue around the words was more soothing than the sound of water over marble in la Fontana di Trevi. I shifted in my seat and took a deep swig of my wine.

I cleared my throat and placed my napkin in my lap.

‘So are you coming out with us tomorrow? Day one of official Bellissimo tour shenanigans.’

Marcello reclined in his chair, sliding his sunglasses off his face and into the thick fold of his dark hair.

‘No,’ he said simply, and I felt a surge of disappointment inside me. Then I wondered what exactly Marcello had to do with the tour group. Apart from attending the meet-and-greet, and his apparent interest to help show the group around in our downtime, he seemed to have no official role within Bellissimo Tours. Was he Maria’s wingman, her business partner, her lover? I didn’t sense a romantic vibe between them.

I straightened in my chair, looking at Marcello with a long, assessing stare. He didn’t flinch.

‘How exactly are you affiliated with the tour?’

Marcello shrugged. ‘I’m not.’

My brows rose, pausing for my next hard-hitting question.

Wait a minute.

Troubling thoughts ran through my mind: if he wasn’t affiliated, what the hell was I doing with him? Walking the streets, seeing the sights, wining and dining with him. He could be a con man, racking up a huge bill for having taken me around the city for the day; he could be spiking my drink and placing me in the boot of a car after lunch, never to be seen again.

‘Are you affiliated with the hotel?’ I asked as calmly as I could.

Marcello leant his elbows casually on the tabletop, looking directly at me in that way he had. ‘No.’

I wanted to press further but our waiter was at our table now, smiling and charming. I pointed at a random item on the menu and fixed my eyes back on Marcello, who ordered with far more thought.

‘More wine?’ the waiter posed.

My eyes darted to the near-on empty bottle. Christ, I had to slow down; legless in Rome for a second night was not going to happen.

I smiled and covered my glass and the waiter looked at me as if I was a lunatic, like he had never seen such an action before. From an outsider’s perspective, Marcello and I must have looked a sight: the paranoid and slightly clammy girl interrogating an Italian runway model. No wonder he looked bemused.

‘Sooo, what is it that you do exactly, Marcello?’

Scam vulnerable tourists.

Marcello topped up his own glass. ‘Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that. What is it that brings you to Rome?’

‘Oh no-no-no, I asked first. I have spent far more time with you than anyone else in my entire group, and I already know way too much about them and absolutely nothing about you.’

‘Well, I know nothing about you either.’ He smiled, satisfied, like we had reached a stalemate, but unlike him I had nothing to hide.

‘Okay, well, I am a twenty-two-year-old Gemini who took a gap year three years ago from a Bachelor of Arts course at uni, thinking I would use that one year to work and “find myself”, before inevitably re-enrolling, though this time to major in history with the plan to become a high-school teacher because, let’s face it, apart from that very splendid path my parents had picked out for me, I really didn’t have a bloody clue what I wanted to do with my life or where I was going, and still don’t, so in order to pretend like I am living some kind of life I booked a rather haphazard trip with a dodgy-ass travel agent and now I am stuck with a group of people that I really don’t like, and all that keeps me from booking an early ticket back home is my pride and the fettucine carbonara that I may have just ordered.’

I sat there for a long, drawn-out moment as Marcello simply looked at me, a little alarmed, perhaps wondering if I planned to drug him and put him in the boot of a car. I rested my hands on the table. Wow, I had never said any of those things out loud, and saying them only made me feel more shit. If I couldn’t make something of this holiday then what was going to become of me? I would be back home, broke, living at Mum and Dad’s house and even more clueless than before.

If blurting out my rather uninspiring story was meant to encourage Marcello to open up, it was a failure. Instead, he silently topped up my glass and this time I didn’t object, quickly taking a deep swig in the hope it would cool my pink cheeks, which were currently burning with mortification.

‘I’ve been working on something new.’ Marcello’s words stopped me from taking another sip. I slowly placed the glass down, afraid that if I moved he might stop.

‘I work with Maria on occasion, but I don’t think it’s going to work, not this time. The group is too … young.’

I nodded my head. ‘I’m pretty sure they’re drunk most of the time, too.’

Marcello laughed, a welcome reprieve from the gloomy turn our afternoon had taken, though I cursed myself for interrupting his story.

Marcello shrugged. ‘You win some, you lose some. Tell me, Sammi, what are you doing on this tour? It seems so …’

‘Not my scene?’ I laughed.

Marcello smiled, turning the base of the wine glass from side to side, his eyes moving from the glass to me.

‘You seem different,’ he said, seriously.

I smiled. ‘Well, Marcello,’ I said, lifting my glass up for another sip, ‘I will take that as an absolute compliment.’