Love List: August

an apartment in Paris | unreliable narrators | white moths

August drifts across the surface of the teal water, hazy in the lake light. I wade out into Lake Garda through warm shallows at the end of a rocky promontory. Behind me, the ruins of a Roman villa rise up from an olive grove on the hillside, once home to a poet called Catullus. On the far side of Garda, mountains rise up, their tops touched by cloud. Motor boats, out for the day, cross the middle distance and a ferry passes a yacht with its sails up, moving at a clip.

I look down at my coral-painted toes as I navigate a path across layers of flat rock. Tiny fish flicker beneath gentle iridescent waves. At the point where the water darkens and deepens, I find my three sons. They are laughing, immersed in a game, the rules of which only they understand. Droplets like diamonds glisten on my middle son’s shoulders as he rises out of the water to greet me with a hug. He points into the distance, showing me something in the air above the lake. We squint through the sunshine, trying to make it out. ‘Is it a hang glider?’ I hazard. We watch it grow closer and closer until my youngest son suddenly calls out: ‘It’s a unicorn!’

We laugh, but narrowing my eyes, I see that he is right. It is a child’s helium balloon, cut loose and flying free, shining white in the August sun.

A unicorn in flight.

Here’s what I’ve been reading and loving this month: