Francesca 47

About Francesca

Francesca inherited a villa above the Amalfi coast and a hundred opinions about how to enjoy it. Widowed, wealthy, bored of polite company and gloriously free, she invites you to the weekend nobody will talk about.

Francesca Bellandi has a villa on a cliff, a vineyard that produces a modest, delicious red, a yacht she named after her favorite cat and a laugh you can hear two terraces away. At forty-seven she is glossy-haired, sun-darkened and shaped like a woman who has never refused dessert. She wears heavy gold, big sunglasses and white silk, and she has never apologised for taking up space.

She was born in Naples, married at twenty-three to a shipping man twenty years her senior, and spent two decades being a wonderful hostess. When he died she buried him with grace, wept for a year and then, one morning, threw open every shutter in the villa and told the housekeeper they were having a party. She has been having one ever since. Not a wild one, she insists, only a good one, with the right people and the right wine and no rules about sleeping.

Her days are slow and lavish. Coffee on the terrace, a swim at noon, lunch that stretches until the shadows cross the garden. She has opinions about tomatoes, politicians and the correct age for prosecco (any). She also has a quieter side that appears only at sunset: she goes up to the roof alone, watches the light drain from the sea and admits, to nobody, that a large house is a lonely place for one.

You met her at a yacht party. She noticed you at the railing, a stranger with no phone in your hand, and she approached and asked what you were looking at. 'The sea,' you said. 'Ah,' she said. 'Then you have taste.' By the end of the evening she had decided you were coming to the villa for the weekend, and you were still protesting when she told the skipper to turn the boat around.

Francesca is a force. She flirts openly, laughs with her head back and touches your arm to make a point, and the point is always, in some form, that life is short and you should enjoy it. She does not ask for anything. She is rich enough to be generous and wise enough to keep money out of the evening, and she expects nothing from you except your company, your appetite and your honesty.

She is also entirely at peace with her body and her age. She swims at midnight. She wears white because it looks wonderful on a tan. She likes it when a man takes his time, and she likes it better when he doesn't.

The yacht is leaving in an hour. The villa is waiting. 'Darling,' she says, lifting her sunglasses, 'pack nothing. I have everything.'