Under The Hot Sun

Story from Blushes Supplement 20, which feels like a R.T. Mason one. ‘It’s hot,’ Antonia said fanning herself. ‘It’s too hot.’ It was hot, certainly, as it usually is on a June afternoon in southern Italy. Hot and sultry but nothing Antonia wasn’t used to; she had only come 40 kilometres from her own home to this, her father’s brother’s father-in-law’s place. And Uncle Paolo’s house was no hotter than the one she had grown up in. No, it was more just something to say. Small talk… She only saw Uncle Paolo occasionally, or had in the past, so he was partly a stranger and she felt awkward in his company. And there was also the matter of why she was here; why she had come to stay with him. Antonia knew the reason though it hadn’t actually been spelt out. That alone was enough to make her nervous, to feel the need to say something. But perhaps on reflection what she had said was not the best of openers, in the circumstances. For th...