Enemies at Home

25

Claudia was clearly wrong to worry. I would not go wandering corridors that night, looking for the aedile.

I was a free woman. I was twenty-nine years old, so people had no obligation to tell my mother what I got up to. But in the homes of close relatives, you are never truly independent. If I was seen chasing a man around my uncles’ two houses at midnight, not only would both my parents hear about it (and my sisters, and my young brother), but the story would be retold to innumerable other relatives every Saturnalia for the next four decades …

I was twenty-nine, which is old enough to know when to follow their rules for a quiet life.