Under The Sunset

Each year, Emily Shelley and her family gather at the same villa in Malta. Each summer is shared among long picnics on the warm sand, infinite bathing in the salted sea of the Mediterranean and long, naive conversations under the heat and the sea-salted wind of Malta. Each July brings familiar faces together. But one of them progressively becomes impossible to ignore. It all begins with an intense, inseparable friendship that, over time, gives way to deeper and unbidden feelings. Feelings that make each summer even more eagerly awaited.

However, childhood summers never last forever.

When duty calls her father back to London, the young woman is torn from the only life she has ever known and thrust into a world of rules, expectations and calculated conversations. The Mediterranean Sea is replaced with candlelit balls, and the carefree spirit of Malta is now nothing more than a warm and nostalgic memory.

Years pass.

Some letters are written but never reach their recipient. Seasons change. Suitors arrive, and are refused. And somewhere between what is expected of her and what she cannot bring herself to forget, she begins to understand the weight of choosing between duty and desire.

Yet some memories refuse to fade.

And some summers refuse to end.

A story inspired by true events.