Page 72 of The Italian Obsession
“You’re a Kiwi?”
“No, Australian.”
“Ahh, how are you finding it?” She smiles. “Milan, I mean.”
“Good.” I shrug. “I find the language barrier a little harder than I thought I would.”
“Yeah, I found it really hard to settle in at first. Took me a good six months to feel at home. I moved here three years ago. My fiancé is Italian. We met on a Contiki tour in Germany.”
“Oh.” I smile. “That’s lovely.”
“Not really. He’s an ass.” She rolls her eyes. “I’m off him today. He crawled in at four this morning. He’s lucky he didn’t wake up with a plastic bag over his head. Stupid twat.”
I giggle. I like this girl.
“You’ll like this gym, it’s very multicultural. It’s owned by an English couple. It seems to have a lot of foreign members as well as Italian. It’s not intentional, I think it’s just the central location.”
“Sounds great.”
“The first session is a free trial. Do you want to work out today, and then I can show you the rates and memberships at the end?”
“Yes, please.”
She gestures to the treadmill, and I hop on. She hits the buttons and it starts up.
“Not too fast,” I warn her. “I’m likely to die of a heart attack, I’m so unfit.”
“At least you don’t work here.” She huffs. “I have no bloody excuse.”
________
A head pops around my office door. “Olivia, would you have time to go and pick something up for me?” Tara from the design team asks. “You can take my company car. It’s just on the other side of town. I’m just really swamped, and we need this sample for a meeting at four.”
“Yeah, sure.” I spin in my chair toward her. “What do you need?”
“There’s a commercial dry cleaner who is trialing a dryclean on a new fabric we are thinking of using next season.”
“Okay. So it’s just a piece of fabric that I’m picking up?”
“No, we’ve made a very basic dress. We just want to see how it washes and wears. I’ll text you the address.”
“Great.”
She passes me her car keys. “You have a license here, right?”
I take them from her. “I have an international license. How I will drive with it is another story.”
She laughs. “Just don’t crash, and no rush. As long as I have it by four.”
“I’m going on lunch soon, anyway, so I’ll get it while I’m out.”
My phone beeps with the address. “Addio.”
“Addio.” I open the text and read the address. Hmm, it seems familiar. I stare at the address in front of me. Where have I seen that before?
Tower 1, 365 Amaro Ave: Level Four
Centro Direzionale di Milano
