At 16, I fell for Giacomo when I was on holiday in Italy. Our young love didn’t survive my move home to Scotland, but years later, quite unexpectedly, we found each other again
Grownups often roll their eyes at young love: at how all-consuming it is for the teenagers involved, and how predictably doomed it is to fail. But my holiday romance changed the course of my life.
I was 16 when I met Giacomo at a bar in Atina, the tiny Italian mountain town where my parents grew up. There was a local festival one evening and tables were scarce, so our two friendship groups ended up squished around the same one. At more than 6ft tall, Giacomo was hard to miss. He was also friendly, smiley and, while he didn’t speak a word of English, I loved that he spared me the whole ciao bella swagger usually reserved for “foreign girls”.
